Legacies
by Ferric
Summary: An expansion and continuation of 'Sins of the Fathers' from my 'Teratogenesis' collection of oneshots. A RE6 AU focused on Jake and Sherry. Sherry hasn't managed to get through her time in captivity unscathed and now she and Jake have to figure out what to do next. At the same time Jake has to come to terms with the fact that, somehow, he's become rather fond of the American agent.
1. Escape

**Notes:** This first chapter was originally posted under the name _Sins of the Fathers_ as part of my _Teratogenesis_ set of oneshots. I started getting ideas based on it and decided to continue it, making it its own story to keep things better organized. The next chapter and all the following ones will be all new content so feel free to skip ahead if you've already read this in its original posting. Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

o0o

Of all the things Jake had been ready for when the door to his cell swung open there being no one on the other side hadn't been one of them. His very first thought was that it had to be a dream because the whole place had a sort of dream like quality to it.

White walls, white light, white everything and nothing ever changed. He received his meals at the same time every day, blood samples were taken at regular intervals. The only break in the routine was that on occasion he would be injected with something, and that was the entirety of what happened. The injections never did anything as far as he could tell so after the first month or so he'd stopped worrying. About the injections at least, there were plenty of other things for him to worry about, such as what was happening in the world outside.

It had been one hundred and fifty four days by his count, and he was sure that he had missed some, since he and Sherry had been captured. Anger had given way to frustration had given way to tedium and after all that time he knew no more about what was going on than he had when he first woke up in the blindingly white room.

He would have thought that being Umbrella's captive would have been terrifying, but it wasn't, not on its own at least. Waiting and being helpless wasn't a walk in the park by any means, but at the same time he understood how much worse his situation could have been. He just hoped that Sherry was okay. There was no reason for him to worry about her, but it helped break up the monotony and the more he thought about it the more he decided she was kind of cute, in a stuck up, naïve sort of way.

On several occasions he'd attempted to start a conversation with the guards in a desperate attempt to learn what was going on, but that hadn't worked. He could barely string a sentence together in Mandarin and the guards did a pretty good job of pretending they didn't speak anything else even though at least two of them clearly weren't Chinese. Combine that with the fact that that it was a coin toss as to whether the guard outside his cell would be a human or a J'avo and it wasn't worth the risk. The human ones would just ignore him, the J'avo were more likely to come in and beat the shit out of him for sport. He wasn't a pushover by any means and could hold his own in a fight, just not against something that was basically a B.O.W.

On the bright side the J'avo were more likely to talk between themselves when they were by his cell, meaning that he was able to overhear some fairly interesting conversations. He'd managed to pick up enough Mandarin to follow simple conversations and thanks to repetition and tone there were times he could take a guess about what was being discussed. What he'd managed to understand wasn't comforting. The name Wesker had been mentioned too many times for it to be coincidence.

Crazy as it might have been, he hoped that it was because Wesker had somehow managed to survive and was behind all of this, because otherwise the implications were even more unpleasant. Sherry had tracked him down for a reason, had known that he'd be immune to the latest viral super weapon. It was something he didn't want to think about. Of course trying not to think about it only made him turn endless possibilities over in his mind as he stared at the blank white walls of his cell.

He knew his mother had been to America, worked there for a length of time, and that his father had been an American she'd met at her job. She hadn't talked much about where she'd been or what she'd done, which made it too easy to imagine the worst case scenarios, something he wasn't comfortable doing. He wasn't stupid enough to think that his mother had been a saint before she died, but there were some things he was sure she wouldn't have done. Besides, she'd reassured him countless times that his father had been a good man, that it had been all the trouble in America that kept him from finding them. There had been no reason to assume anything other than his father was a deadbeat who'd abandoned them and his mother was in denial.

Except he was still alive and sane, not running around as some bug-eyed J'avo after unknowingly injecting himself with the C-virus. What were the odds that he of all people would be immune to it? Good enough that someone in the American government had had been betting on it, sending out a human B.O.W. to find him. Because that's what Sherry was, wasn't she? She might have looked like a little girl, but he'd seen firsthand what she was capable of.

Then there was what the woman, Ada Wong, who'd captured them had said.

Once he found Sherry, if he found Sherry, she was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

And now that his cell door was open there just might be a chance at it.

Expecting a trick, some strange test by Umbrella, he cautiously pushed the door the rest of the way open and was genuinely surprised to find that the hall was empty.

It meant nothing of course, they could be watching his every move through cameras, but that was no reason for him to not at least try.

He made his way down the hall, the same unrelenting white as his cell, more carefully than was typical for him, but after spending half a year trapped in one room, taken out only for testing and experiments, he had good reason to be cautious.

There were dozens of doors in the hall, all opened and leading to cells like his, all empty which was probably for the best. If there'd been other captives there was no guarantee that they be friendly or even human. It was Umbrella after all.

At the same time he was disappointed that Sherry was nowhere to be found. It was stupid for him to have hoped for as much. Not even Umbrella was stupid enough to keep two high value prisoners close enough to talk to each other, even if they were locked away twenty-four seven.

Still, he was frustrated that she wasn't there, ready and raring to go like she'd been when he'd first met her. It was crazy how much he'd thought about her since they'd been captured, and not just because she'd been the last friendly face that he'd seen. There was no time to worry about any of that now though, not when there was a chance that he might actually be able to get out.

Ignoring the empty cells he hurried to the end of the hall and, hoping for the best, turned right.

No more cells, just a short hall that dead ended at a door that clearly lead to a stairwell. Again he had to make a choice and hope for the best when he decided to go down. If he was in one of the building's basement levels then he was screwed, but he hoped that he'd be able to figure that out before it became a problem.

Going down one flight he left the stairwell, hoping that he'd find himself somewhere he would be able to gain his bearings. Instead he found himself in another plain, white hall. This one was slightly different looking than the one in the cellblock, something he decided to take as a good sign. There was paneling on the walls and the ceiling tiles were sound dampening ones.

The first door he checked was to an empty room, the next had a white table and white chairs of a cold, industrial design. He wouldn't even be able to break a leg off one of them to use as an improvised weapon, so he closed the door and moved on.

After that he found another empty room, a storage room and a rock garden of all things, followed by a room full of computers, all passcode locked, everything in the same white on white on white.

Maybe his escape really was a dream and he was about to wake up on a table, coming out of anesthesia after some horrible experiment.

The sound of voices and hurried footsteps in the distance made him duck into the nearest room, which turned out to be a server room. Short of pushing something over on whoever came to get him there was nothing he could use as a weapon. There wasn't even anywhere he could hide.

Less than five minutes out and he was about to get captured yet again.

The voices were getting closer.

They sounded human, so maybe he had a chance. If he got the jump on one of them and managed to wrestle his gun from him he might be able to take out the second before they got the chance to alert the rest of the guards to his location.

If there were only two of them that would work. Just because he only heard two voices didn't mean there were only two of them.

Straining to hear how many sets of footsteps there were he waited, hardly daring to breathe.

Any second now they'd open the door and he'd have to act. The least he could do was put up a fight.

They were right outside the door where they stopped.

Rapid back and forth conversation followed, too fast for him to catch anything of importance. An alarm went off somewhere and they took off running.

Their voices faded into the distance.

It wasn't him that they were after, which meant one of several things. He wasn't the only one to have escaped, Sherry had gotten out as well and was causing trouble elsewhere in the facility, or the place was under attack by some unknown outside agency.

Funny that his first thought was of Sherry when it was equally likely that some sort of monster had gotten out when the doors opened and was going on a rampage through the place. There were other options though. Someone might have come to rescue him, probably whoever Sherry worked for because he couldn't think of anyone who would want to come after him, unless Sherry hadn't been full of shit when talking about how valuable his blood was for making vaccines. Umbrella had certainly taken enough of it.

Jake didn't like the implications of that. There wasn't too big a market for zombie viruses, but vaccines and treatments for them where in high demand, even though most of them didn't work worth a damn. On the other hand, the Americans had been willing to take a big gamble going after him, which had to mean something. It was possible that a whole new age of biological warfare was starting, with him at the center of it all and he wasn't going to make a dime off of it. If only Umbrella had made him an offer instead of kidnapping him. Then again, it was a lot easier for them to take what they needed than it would have been to get into a bidding war with the American government.

So maybe Sherry's employers had tracked him down again and were coming to get him. The idea that he was valuable enough that Sherry's employers would attempt to rescue him was an interesting one, but not one that meant anything good for him. Most likely he'd be trading one set of captors for another in that case and the new ones would probably be far less accommodating. As captivity went what he'd been through wasn't too bad, it still sucked, but it beat the hell out of being chained up in a glorified closet or dumped in what amounted to a hole in the ground, both of which had been possibilities. Umbrella had more money than common sense, which had worked fairly well for him up to this point. Three meals a day, an actual bed, showers every three days and as long as he didn't antagonize the J'avo, relatively little abuse.

What it came down to was, even if someone had come to rescue him, it was best for him not to wait for them to find him.

With that in mind he left the server room and continued to explore. Maybe he'd find a weapon, maybe he'd find a way out, either one was fine by him.

The very next room he found was the jackpot, a locker room. White lockers, of course, but breaking the pattern of things they had ordinary master locks, not keypads or locks built into the doors.

It was something that might actually work for him.

He walked up and down the rows, giving each lock a tug. There was always a chance that one of the locks had stuck after being closed and enough of them were in bad enough condition that one sticking seemed a very real possibility. He was willing to guess that the lockers belonged to security, which gave him even more reason to try and get into at least one.

It had to be security because so many of the lockers had dented doors, something he chose to attribute to the shit impulse control that J'avo showed. They liked yelling and punching things when they got pissed off, doors, walls, him, each other, and they got pissed off a lot. Over time they'd also gotten increasingly common, the human guards either leaving or being infected.

Halfway down the third row he struck gold, a lock too twisted to even close.

Inside was a loaded gun, some shitty mostly plastic looking piece of Chinese garbage, because apparently just because Umbrella could afford the best of everything didn't mean that they were going to give it to B.O.W.s. More importantly there was a uniform that looked like it would fit him, complete with a face concealing mask.

He got dressed as quickly as he could, putting on the mask as well. It wasn't the best of disguises and would fail the moment anyone said anything to him, but if he was careful it might let him get farther than he would have without it.

Feeling more confident for having a plan and a gun he left the locker room and resumed searching for a way out.

The alarm continued to blare, a recorded message joining the sound. It was in Chinese so he had no idea what it was about, but he got the feeling that there was more going on than just his getting out.

Breaking into a slow jog he finished checking behind every door in the hall and found nothing more of use. It figured that finding a floor plan posted somewhere was too much to ask and all the computers he'd found had required a password.

Back to the stairwell then.

He started to go down again, stopping when he heard a commotion from below. By the sounds of it there was an argument going on, one that he had no desire to get involved it since it sounded like most of the individuals involved were J'avo.

So that meant going back up was his only choice.

Stopping at the door to the cell blocks, he hesitating just long enough for the door two flights down to slam open and a mixed group of uniformed J'avo and human guards to pour into the stairwell. The argument, whatever it was about, was still going on and none of them even looked up at him.

The group stormed up the stairs and went straight past him into the cell block, one of the J'avo stopping just long enough to shove him out of the way and scream something that sounded like garbled profanity at him. The last of the group, one of the human guards looked at him, looked through the open door before speaking to him.

Jake had no idea what the man was saying, but he sounded terrified.

When the man repeated the last bit of what he'd said, looking at Jake with a hopeful expression Jake shrugged, hoping that whatever question he'd just been asked wasn't one that needed any more of an answer.

The man let out a nervous laugh and ran up another flight of stairs and out the door.

If Jake had to take a guess about what had just happened it was that he'd been right about not being the only one to have gotten out and that something, possibly several somethings, were loose in the building and the man had decided to get the fuck out. Considering Umbrella's track record it was a fairly safe guess and if that were the case following the fleeing guard might be the best thing to do.

Letting the door to the cell block close Jake weighed his options.

In the cell block the argument was still going on, loud enough for him to hear through the door. One of the J'avo, possibly the one that had pushed him judging by how incoherent it sounded, was screaming now. Maybe they'd arrived at his cell and seen that it was empty.

The message accompanying the alarm changed and red warning lights started flashing.

Whatever was going on was getting worse.

Another J'avo started yelling and, much to Jake's surprise, shots were fired. Apparently Umbrella still hadn't figured out how to control its monsters.

It was good for him though, the added confusion meant that it would take longer for anyone to start looking for him.

Making up his mind Jake went up and out the door the guard had gone through to see if it really was the way out.

The hall into which the man had fled looked promising, more so than the previous area he'd searched. Despite being the same unrelenting white as everywhere else, it looked more like something out of an office building than a lab or a prison.

Turning a corner he found the guard, or what was left of him.

It looked like he'd been attacked by a wild animal, or, more likely, a B.O.W. His throat had been torn out and his stomach ripped open. There was blood everywhere, splattered on the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. The thing must have gotten the drop on him because he hadn't even had a chance to draw his weapon.

Whatever it was couldn't have gone far and the last thing Jake wanted to do was run into it. Even if it didn't catch him unawares like it had the guard, he doubted that the gun he had would be enough to do much more than piss it off. Unfortunately, if the guard really had been trying to escape that meant the way out was past what was left of him, in the direction the B.O.W. was likely waiting.

Slowly, carefully, Jake inched past the body and down the hall. The guard had been torn up pretty badly, but Jake had heard enough stories about B.O.W.s carrying the viruses used to make them that he wouldn't have been too surprised if the guard got back up and came at him. Shooting the body in the head would be a good way to prevent that from happening, but it would also alert whatever had killed the man.

Up ahead there was an open door on the right side of the hall, smears of blood leading into the room. The room itself was unlit and large enough that he couldn't see much of anything past the half open door.

That had to be where the thing was. If he could make it past the door unnoticed he'd be safe.

Something moved in the room and he froze.

More movement, a crash and then a low moan of terror.

It had been months, but the sound of the voice was unmistakable.

"Sherry?"

Like he'd thought, she'd gotten out as well and now she was trapped in the room with whatever had killed the guard.

More noise in the darkened room, something large, maybe a table or desk being knocked over and shoved aside.

"Jake? Oh no. Please no. No no no no," she whimpered in the darkness.

"Don't worry," he reached into the room, feeling along the wall to try and find a light switch, "I'll get you out of here."

He didn't know how, but he wasn't about to leave her to get mauled.

The sound of the B.O.W.'s ragged, animal panting filled the room.

Sherry sobbed, "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"You'll be fine," he reassured, still fumbling for the light switch. He'd seen her recover from what should have been a fatal injury, there was no reason for him to be worried as long as he could get the thig away from her, but how frantic, how hurt she sounded tore at him, "I'm not going to let anything hurt you."

Finding the light switch he flipped it on and jumped back from the door, expecting the thing to lunge at him the moment there was light in the room.

Sherry screamed.

He waited.

Nothing happened.

There was nothing in the room other than a number of scattered chairs and an overturned table in the far corner, behind which he could hear Sherry's muffled sobs.

"Where is it?" As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to kick himself.

Behind the table Sherry let out an anguished wail.

"Shit," he pulled the mask off and threw it to the floor, "I'm sorry. I wasn't…"

Of course there was no 'it'. Even though he'd been thinking about it earlier he'd managed to forget that Sherry wasn't human. She was probably some sort of miniature Tyrant, something which he realized sounded far more adorable than it had any right to, probably because it was Sherry that he was thinking of. Tyrants could take a lot of punishment, but there was only so far they could go before they started to mutated. Umbrella had probably done things to her, messed her up pretty bad and B.O.W. or not, Sherry was still very much a little girl.

A little girl who, at the moment, was hyperventilating.

"Calm down," Jake made his way into the room, carefully stepping around the toppled chairs, "We'll get out of here and –"

She started crying.

On some level he knew what he was doing was crazy, walking into a room and trying to talk to a B.O.W., but the way she was carrying on he couldn't help but imagine that it was just the little blond girl that he'd been through so much insanity with that was hiding on the other side of the table. He just couldn't reconcile the sound of her crying with a Tyrant, miniature or not.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," she gasped out between sobs, her voice shrill with fear, "I was supposed to – Oh Jake, I didn't want…"

"Just calm down. Whatever they did to you, it's done now. We can get out of here and that'll be that," leaving her would probably be for the best, except if he did he wouldn't be able to live with himself. It would be like abandoning a stupid little kid in the middle of a warzone. A stupid kid, who, Tyrant or not, was kind of cute, "Once we're out of here you can contact your employers, let them know where we are and I'll let you take me to them. They can get all the samples they need and I won't make them pay."

His outrageously generous offer only made her cry even harder.

Still hidden behind the table Sherry continued her crying fit, "It's not…I can't. They're going to…"

"Unless you know more than I do, we don't know what's happened since we got captured," he reminded her, "It might not be too late."

"It is!" she screamed, "I just…just…Jake, I can't…"

"How do you know?" he snapped back, starting to get frustrated with the whole situation. They needed to get out but she seemed hell bent on being miserable. Unless she really did know something that he didn't, "Umbrella wouldn't have kept us here this long if there wasn't something they needed. They can't have succeeded in whatever it is that they're trying to do, not yet at least."

"Maybe," the table moved slightly. By the sounds of it she'd punched it, "I don't know."

"So do you want to stick around and try to stop them?" he didn't think so, but considering how much America loved the idea of some big hero putting saving the day on their own it was always a possibility.

"No, we can't! I can't," Sherry gasped, "She brought that thing, Ustanak, here. I can't fight it. She'd let it…it would stand outside where they kept me and…Jake that thing would…I don't want to ever see it again."

"What the fuck do you want then?" he shouted, exasperated with how long she'd been carrying on for when there were more important things to worry about, like escaping.

"I-I just wanted to be allowed out," she stammered, "I begged Derek for years and th-this was it. They let me go on the mission to find you and if I did a good job of it I'd…they'd let me…I thought, maybe…I just wanted to go outside without guards and fences everywhere. Ever since I was little I dreamed that…"

He'd assumed that she'd volunteered for the project or something, but the way she was talking made it sound like she'd been an experiment since she was a little kid. No wonder she acted so clueless if she'd been kept locked away for most of her life, except it didn't explain what had her so upset. All that time should have meant that she was used to the idea of what she was.

"You found me," he gave an exasperated sigh, "So if we get out of here it's mission complete. You did it! Good job! Everyone's happy!"

"No!"

Her scream was somewhere between an animal howl of pain and a child's heartbroken sob.

"What's wrong?" it was a stupid, useless question to be asking, but if he got an answer maybe he'd be able to make some progress.

"I-I," her voice grew soft, little more than a whisper, "I don't want to be a monster. Jake, I don't-I don't…I…"

So far he'd stopped a few feet from the table and was unable to see her. All he knew was that whatever had happened, it couldn't have been that bad. She was probably just a little messed up, claws for sure considering what she'd done to the guard, maybe some exposed muscle and other stuff that she'd probably be able to hide if she dressed right, but it couldn't have been that bad. The fact that she was still coherent enough to be upset about it was proof of that. Maybe if he'd been in her situation he'd be pissed off, but he was sure that he wouldn't be a wreck like she was. Probably the reason she was so upset was because she was a woman and cared about her appearance.

"It can't be that bad," but he kept his distance, waiting for her to get up from her hiding spot.

"It's bad," she whimpered.

"We can worry about it once we get out of here," he snapped. If she didn't get up from behind the table by the time he counted to ten he was going to go over there, pull her to her feet and drag her out.

Sherry shifted slightly, sniffled loudly and made no attempt to do anything else.

"Are you really going to make me pick you up and carry you out of here?" Jake demanded.

"I don't think…" her statement trailed off in a hysterical giggle.

"That's the problem," he grumbled as he looked over the table, "You don't…"

The thing on the other side stared up at him, blue gray eyes wide with terror. They were the one thing that remained recognizable and even they hadn't remained unchanged. The shape of her pupils was all wrong, wavery, and streaks of color had spread out into the whites. What struck him the most was that they were the saddest looking eyes he'd ever seen in an otherwise expressionless face, leathery bruise colored skin stretched taunt over a mask-like plate of bone. Thin lips pulled back from jagged yellow fangs in a fearful grimace.

"It's…" Sherry started.

"Not that bad," he lied, holding out a hand to help her up. It was bad, it was awful, but he'd seen worse.

She reached out with claws long and sharp as knives then stopped. They were smeared red with the dead guard's blood.

Shaking, she pulled her arm back and covered her face.

The motion was difficult for her. It was hard for him to tell, but it looked like her shoulders had been twisted out of place and reset in a new position. The question was, had it been due to injury that hadn't healed properly or was it just part of the mutation she'd undergone?

What exactly had they done to her?

Whatever it was it must have been pretty bad to leave her in the state she was in. She'd been so cheerful, so stupidly optimistic and trusting. Now she was a shaking wreck, unable to even make eye contact, something that was made all the more pathetic by the physical changes she'd undergone.

Never in his life had he felt as bad for someone as he did for her at this moment.

"Come on super girl," carefully he knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder, "We've got to get out of here."

Her skin twitched at the touch, muscles spasmming beneath his fingers. When he lifted his hand an enormous red eye opened, its irregularly shaped slit pupil widening until it was nearly round. It rolled wildly in its socket, blinked several times and closed. The fact that he didn't shout, jump back or respond in any way was a testament to the shit he'd seen.

When Sherry remained motionless he took her by the arm and had a go at pulling her to her feet.

She made no attempt at resisting, which he figured made for a good start.

Once he had her on her feet he was able to get a better look at her. The first thing he realized was that the fact that she had tried to hide from him was the only thing that had prevented a disaster. If he'd seen her standing in the hall he wouldn't have recognized her and would have opened fire the instant he saw her. There was nothing of the crazy little girl he'd first met left. Hell, she hardly even looked human.

The thing standing in front of him was taller than he was, by a foot at least, and, proportionally, considerably wider across the shoulders, though that was likely due to the way her arms had gained an extra joint there, possibly to accommodate the second, smaller set of arms that was still partially fused to her chest. The thing was, as twisted as her anatomy was, she looked a lot better off than any of the C-virus mutants they'd encountered in that she was still roughly symmetrical. The changes, though horrific, seemed less random, as though there was a process to what had happened to her, a progression towards a final point. Add that to the fact that he couldn't see any exposed organs or open wounds and over all things weren't really that bad, or at least they could have been a lot worse. She wasn't at all what he would have expected from a human based B.O.W., more natural looking if a B.O.W. could be described that way.

Or maybe he was trying to justify the fact that he wasn't utterly revolted by her because he was pretty sure he should have been.

The whole time he looked her over she kept her head turned away from him, but at the same time she stared straight at him with the set of red, slit-pupiled eyes in her shoulders. He could tell that she could see with them because they followed his every move, widening and then rapidly closing when he looked at them.

What was it with viruses and extra eyes? At least they weren't blank white bug eyes like J'avo had.

Because this was better, somehow.

An explosion somewhere in one of the lower floors shook the facility.

Sherry tensed, the eyes in her shoulders opening up to look around fearfully.

"Let's go," he ordered, resisting the urge to raise his voice. It wasn't because he was afraid that Sherry would attack him, she'd already made it clear that wasn't about to happen. Instead his concern was that she might start crying again. He wouldn't normally care about something like that, but this was Sherry and if he was going to be honest with himself, he'd somehow ended up growing to kind of like the crazy American.

If he was going to be _absolutely_ honest with himself, he still kind of liked her. Except it was more than kind of.

When she remained standing, frozen in place watching him, he grabbed her by the wrist.

Strong as she was, there was no way he could have dragged her if she'd resisted, but she didn't even try. Meekly she followed him, her breath short and sharp, like she was trying not to cry.

When they went into the hall she whimpered and grabbed his shoulder with her smaller set of arms. Those slender, bony fingers were surprisingly strong.

Turning back to look at her he saw that all of her eyes were tightly shut.

As much as he wanted to ask her what had her in such a bad way, he held his tongue, afraid that saying anything would bring on another crying fit. There would be time to make sense of things later, but for now getting out had to be their number one priority.

There was another explosion, this one louder, and the lights went out.

Between being plunged into total darkness and trying to guide Sherry he miss-stepped and nearly fell. Sherry's death grip on his shoulder was enough to keep him standing. Reflexively, she pulled him in close, awkwardly wrapping one of her larger, main arms around him. He could feel her shaking.

"Can you see?" he asked hopefully. All those eyes had to be good for something.

"No," she whimpered, gripping him even tighter, "It's too dark."

He'd noticed that, in the cabin, until he got the fire going she'd been anxious, looking all around and jumping at every little noise outside, like she thought they were about to be attacked. At the time he'd figured that it was because of exactly that, that she was still jumped up on adrenaline, not he couldn't help but wondering, "Are you afraid of the dark or something?"

"Yes," she said quietly, "Ever since…"

Amazing, the Americans had managed to make a humanoid B.O.W. that was afraid of the dark. There was a joke in there somewhere. Except maybe he was wrong to think of it that way. Maybe he should be thinking of her as the little girl she'd resembled when he first met her. A naïve little girl who'd thought that everything would turn out okay despite being caught up in the middle of the biggest bioterror incident since Terragrigia. And she was afraid of the dark and had been for a long time.

That was all it took for his frustration to fade to pity.

The alarms, which had been sounding the whole time, fell silent.

"This isn't good," Jake muttered, debating whether or not he should make Sherry take the lead for the simple reason that if they were to run into anything unpleasant she'd be the most able to deal with it. Practicality fought with how bad he felt for her and was, to his surprise, lost.

"On the way up here I found a lab where they were keeping some chrysalids," she said in a hurried whisper, "I let them out because I thought they'd help cover our escape."

Great, just great. They were trapped in the dark with who knew how many B.O.W.s, ones that weren't afraid of the dark.

"I messed up."

Panic was starting to creep back into her voice, exactly what he didn't need.

"No you didn't," he reassured, "Anything that keeps the guards here busy and out of our way is a good thing. As soon as you're ready we can start moving. I'll lead the way."

There was a long pause, then, "Okay."

Keeping a hand on the wall he started making his way forward, Sherry clinging to him for dear life. It was awkward going and, thanks to the fact that Sherry had started crying again, there was no way he'd be able to hear if there was anything heading their way unless it was making an awful lot of noise.

Eventually they reached the end of the hall and had the choice of going either left or right.

"Which way?" he asked figuring, that since Sherry had taken a different route through the building, she might have a better idea of where to go.

He could feel her shifting her weight as she thought, fidgeting nervously.

A hum filled the air, coming from one of the floors beneath then. Considering the sorts of mutations he'd seen with the J'avo his first thought was of some sort of giant insect, but the noise was constant, mechanical. A moment later red emergency lights flickered on.

Sherry tensed, nearly jerking him off his feet.

"Take it easy," he patted her arm.

"Right," she said, loosening her grip on him slightly, "I mean we should go to the right. There's nothing down the hall to the left."

Her tone left him doubtful if there was nothing in that direction. Nothing useful maybe, nothing she wanted to talk about, but there was something down there.

So they went right until they came to a door.

Sherry let go of him and took a step back, getting into position to cover him when he opened it, not that she had any way of following through on the intent if she needed to. Despite what she'd done to the guard he had his doubts that she'd lunge past him to deal with any threats if it came to that.

Still, it was the thought that counted.

Readying his gun he reached out and turned the knob. When he went to pull it open he discovered that the door was much heavier than it looked. That could have meant a lot of things given their location, but he chose not to dwell on why a door in an Umbrella facility might be reinforced.

Looking back at Sherry he gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile, then started to open the door.

A thin sliver of bright, normal light shone into the hall. It was too much to hope for that they'd already found the way out, which meant that the part of the building they were about to enter still had full power. Either it was more important or on a different grid, possibly both.

On the other side he could hear voices talking in Chinese. They sounded angry, but the language itself always sounded angry to him. Normal conversations between the guards and scientists that he'd overheard had sounded like they could have degenerated into a fistfight at a moment's notice, and those had just been mundane greetings and polite conversation. The yelling of the J'avo had sounded like total insanity.

Opening the door far enough to look he peered into the hall beyond.

In what had to be one of the most surreal things he'd ever seen he found himself staring out into a hall that wouldn't have been out of place in a luxury hotel. The walls were dark wood and the floor was covered in thick carpet and expensive looking rugs. There were paintings on the walls, all in ornate frames and in the middle of the hall a group of men in suits and masks were talking loudly in Chinese. Whatever they were supposed to be, they didn't look like guards, even though they were all armed. The masks meant that they were probably J'avo and since they weren't waving their guns around or shoving each other they clearly weren't terribly excited about anything.

It was easy to assume that they worked for Umbrella, but at the same time months had passed since they'd been captured, so there was no reason to assume that every mutant worked for the same boss. There'd been the company he'd been working with after all, used as a quick distraction for some larger, unknown purpose that seemed to have centered on finding and capturing him.

Stepping to the side he motioned for Sherry to go over and look, "There's five of them. They're all armed, but they don't look like they work here. I'm not sure if the place is under attack and our escape just happened to line up with it, or if these guys have been brought in to help find us."

Sherry went to look, in the process letting him get a look at her back and yet another eye, this one just off center beneath her right shoulder. Or above the shoulder of the smaller set of arms. Opposite the eye there was a long row of stitches, indicating there should have been another.

What had Umbrella done, injuring her in a way that she wasn't able to regenerate from it? As much as the idea infuriated him, he understood the logic behind it, keeping something potentially dangerous they'd want to have a way to kill it if they needed to. It also meant that he'd have to be careful to make sure that nothing happened to her because… Just because she was a B.O.W. didn't mean that he shouldn't be worried about her.

Closing the door slightly, Sherry continued to look out at the men in the hall, all the while keeping the eye on her back fixed on him, "Do you think they're J'avo or you know, people?"

Suddenly it all fell into place, her freak out earlier, the way she hadn't been able to look when they went into the hall, it all made sense. The guard had been the first actual person she'd killed. Jake had forgotten exactly how bad that moment was, the first time you ended the life of another human being. He still remembered his first time, how he and his friends had gone out and gotten drunk later that night. He'd drank until he was sick and then kept drinking because that at least had given him an excuse to be sick. It was the amount of blood that had gotten to him, and that had been after shooting someone a good distance away. Sherry had been right up in there, using her claws to tear the guard apart, smelling it, feeling it. That had to be the reason, or at least part of it.

"My money's on J'avo, the masks are what give them away. The masks and the yelling," he said quickly, hoping he was right, "If we take them out fast everything's going to be good. We take what we can from their gear, get you a gun and get the fuck out of here because this has to be the way out."

He was pretty sure that she'd be able to use a gun with her smaller set of arms, her aim would be shit, but just having it would help.

"Should I help?" Sherry asked, shaking slightly, either from fear or the desire to do something.

Despite his concern for her, it was difficult not to give a bitingly sarcastic answer to a question like that. There were five of them, one of him, they were all armed and he doubted that he'd be able to do enough damage to kill even one of them if they were J'avo. Of course he expected her to help, but at the same time he was worried about her. There was no reason for it given the situation, but that didn't change how he felt.

He was about to get into one of the most one sided fights he'd ever been in, or it would have been if not for the fact that he had a B.O.W. on his side and he was willing to tell said _weapon_ to sit this one out because he was concerned about _her_.

The only explanation for it all was that he'd gone crazy.

"You really think they're J'avo?" Sherry asked again, seeking reassurance.

That was the problem, he was still thinking of her as Sherry. He'd known that she wasn't human, even when she'd looked it, for enough time that he'd gotten used to the idea. Now that she looked like what she was he was still able to think of her as a girl rather than a monster. A girl that he'd somehow fallen for.

"Yes, they're J'avo," he sighed, knowing that there were two ways the situation could end. The J'avo would finish their conversation and walk away, or, more likely considering how things tended to turn out for him, they'd start heading towards the two of them.

"Okay. I think I can…" Sherry stopped to take a deep breath and when she next spoke it was with more confidence than she'd had since their capture, "I can handle J'avo."

Having said as much Sherry rushed through the door and charged the group.

She smacked the first across the face, shattering his mask and sending him flying as she slammed into the next closest and smashed him against the wall.

Using the door for cover Jake took aim and shot a third in the chest. His only thought was that he hoped that they were J'avo, because if they were human he was going to feel like such an asshole for convincing her to attack them.

The one he'd shot remained standing, which didn't mean anything. He could have been wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit, but then the one Sherry had clawed stood up. With the mask gone he could see its five bulging white eyes.

The fact that he was relieved that they were J'avo was proof of how fucked up the whole situation was.

Glad that he hadn't set Sherry up for another panic attack Jake kept shooting, trying for headshots, not that it seemed to have done much good in the past.

Sherry had managed to hook her claws into the one that she'd knocked into the wall and slammed him head first into the wall, the wood splintering from the repeated impacts, before throwing him at one that started shooting at her.

The pair fell to the floor in a tangled heap, giving her the space she needed to grab the J'avo that Jake had been shooting by the arm and twist. There was a sickening crack as bone broke, her claws slicing through the J'avo's flesh with a spray of slime as the limb tore off. Overbalanced, she staggered back, barely managing to catch herself. At that point Jake had to stop and reload, so she was on her own.

Growling, she charged forward and grabbed the J'avo that had had managed to disentangle itself from its dying comrade and tackled it to the floor. Pinning down with her main arms she used her smaller set of limbs to punch it in the face again and again. Frail as they looked, those limbs were still inhumanly strong. Jake could hear the bones of the thing's face shattering as steam and slime poured from its injuries.

When she finally let go it remained on the floor twitching like a bug in its death throes, its head little more than a mess of ooze and bone fragments.

The J'avo whose arm she'd ripped off let out a shrill screech as the mangled stump stretched into a massive scythe-like limb. Before it managed to use its new weapon, which looked like it was capable of doing some serious damage, Jake shot it between its uppermost pair of eyes. It staggered a few steps towards him, then fell to the floor, its regenerative abilities having been pushed to their limits by so much damage inflicted so quickly.

Another headshot caused one of the two remaining J'avo to drop to its knees, slime seeping from its injuries, while Sherry finished the last by more or less tearing it in half before smashing the kneeling J'avo with all four arms before its body could finish hardening into a chrysalis.

Jake stepped out into the hall and surveyed the carnage, "Good job. Really impressive."

He meant it too. Having seen what she'd done to the guard had been one thing, but actually watching what she was capable of was another. Whatever virus the American government used on her was like nothing he'd ever imagined was possible. Despite being mutated to the point where she wasn't even recognizable as human she was still sane, still herself. That any country was able to make a virus like that was terrifying. It made him glad for America's hypocritical stance on B.O.W.s, because if they'd been openly making and using things like Sherry it would have been the end of his line of work. No one would want to work as a contractor if there was a risk of running into an opposing force made of B.O.W.s that could think, follow orders, and work together. Just the thought of them would be enough to make people stop what they were doing, or resort to other methods.

He stared down at the smoldering remains of the J'avo, wondering for a moment if he was seeing the future of war. Monsters fighting monsters while guys like him, normal human soldiers, became obsolete.

Then Sherry looked at him and smiled weakly before grabbing a wall hanging and attempting to wipe the gore from her claws. The absurd sight made him a lot less worried about the possibility of his own obsolescence. Sherry was a lot of things, but she wasn't a career soldier like him. There had to be a reason that she'd been put through whatever process had made her and not someone else, but she still didn't seem like a terribly good choice. He knew that there was a reason really powerful .s were hard to get, most of the time they died before the process of making them was over. Maybe Sherry was the only survivor of the process, maybe it had been random luck, maybe she was some sort of trial run, maybe he was thinking up random ideas to try and fill in the blanks because he knew so little about her.

What he did know was that there was no denying that she was a B.O.W., but equally undeniable was how utterly feminine she was. It was stupid, but she had been and honestly, still was, the most obviously girly woman he'd ever met without it being some sort of act. Maybe what was part of what he had found so endearing about her, that despite how she acted she was still competent. The way she'd managed to kill four J'avo without getting hurt herself was proof of that.

"So, where to now?" he looked up and down the hall, marveling at the obscene level of wealth on display before examining the bodies on the floor.

Giving up on cleaning her hands Sherry threw the wall hanging to the floor, "I don't know. Out of here and then…I don't know."

Looting the J'avo for gear of any sort wasn't going to be worth it. There was greenish gray slime covering everything, steaming as it cooled and hardened. Sherry was going to have to wait to get a gun, not that she needed it. Eventually though she'd need one, just so that dealing with things from a safe distance was an option.

"Any plans for what to do once we escape?" he asked, testing the waters, trying to figure out if it would be safe for him to make a suggestion of his own, that she stick with him rather than going back to America. He felt like an idiot for even thinking of the idea in the first place, but if Sherry's whole reason for going on a mission to find him was to get out of whatever lab she'd been kept in, then she might be open to the idea.

"No," she tensed, looking at him carefully.

That was more or less the answer he'd expected. For all her big ideas, planning hadn't seemed to have been her strong suit, something that sort of made sense and wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Hell, he wasn't the best at coming up with plans, otherwise he'd have had a lot more money than he did by this point, not that he didn't have enough, it was just that conflicts in eastern Europe had never been that profitable and that was where he'd done most of his work.

"You going to contact your employers and let them know you're still alive and that you've got me?" he was sure that the answer was going to be 'yes', but he had to ask, just to be sure.

She shook her head violently, "No, not like this. They-they'll take me and lock me away and they'll do things just like-like…"

It figured that America would be the first to figure out a way to make B.O.W.s that could actually pass for human and that they'd have no use for them once they mutated too badly, even if they were fine mentally. Or mostly fine. It meant that Sherry in a bad situation, one that he felt guilty over being happy about, "You want to stick with me for a bit then, at least until you figure out what to do?"

"Why?" somehow she managed to make the single word question half hopeful half accusing. It was a sentiment he understood well enough, being made an offer that didn't seem to make sense, but clearly had a catch.

"We don't know where we are, China probably, but other than that who knows? After the mess in Edonia I've got nothing. Well, not quite nothing," he amended, "I've got a bit of money stashed away here and there. It's just that who knows if I'll be able to get it any time soon. The least we should do is work together until we have options. Besides, it'll be better off with two of us. Once we're in a better situation we can figure out how to get your employers the vaccine they're after, negotiate things on our terms. Hell, if you want, if they want it that badly, maybe make it so that you staying with me, keeping an eye on me or something, is part of the deal."

The last bit was something he made up for her benefit, since he really didn't expect whatever organization that she was working for to want to give her up so easily, but it felt like the kind of thing she'd want to hear. In the long run he figured that he could try to convince her to just work with him. He didn't expect her to want to work with the sorts of people he was used to working with, but there were plenty of legitimate organizations he could think of that might be willing to hire someone like her. Starting out would be the hardest part, but after that…

Her eyes narrowed. He could tell that she was trying to figure out what his angle in the situation was, how it would benefit him, but she was too new at figuring out what motivated people. If he was lucky she'd assume that he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, which he more or less was. Yeah, intelligent B.O.W.s were worth a lot of money, but trying to find a buyer felt a bit too much like crossing a line that he wasn't willing to cross. He did have some principals after all.

"Do you really think that would work?" now she sounded more hopeful than suspicious, "That they won't make me come back?"

"How are they going to force you to if you don't want to? The way things are right now no one will even be able to find you if you don't want them to," he offered, hoping that she'd latch onto the idea.

Somewhere in the compound, on one of the floors beneath them, there was a muffled explosion. It was enough to distract Sherry from her confusion and self-pity, at least for the time being.

"Okay," she said hesitantly, still looking uncertain about the situation, "I don't know why you want to help me all of a sudden, but it's not like I have a choice."

The resignation in her tone was at odds with the cheerful girl she'd been when he first met her. He wanted to blame Umbrella, but he had a feeling that it went back way before that. Whatever she'd been through, she was used to ending up in situations where she didn't have a choice in matters.

Another explosion sounded, this one closer and strong enough to shake the pictures on the walls.

"Let's get out of here," he urged, glad for the excuse to end the awkward silence that had started to grow.

They wandered the halls, finding rooms full of antique weaponry, paintings, a grand piano, and countless other displays of wealth. It was positively disgusting and he wished that they had the time to poke around a bit. In any other situation he wouldn't have been above taking a few souvenirs, but nothing was nothing he could see small or easy enough to sell to make it worth it. If he was going to take anything it would be something he could carry and turn to cash quickly.

Turning a corner they came to an overturned cabinet. The glass doors had shattered and the carpet was full of broken glass, both from them and from the bottles that had been inside.

"Careful," Sherry stepped cautiously past the patch of wet carpet, "I don't know what any of that stuff is, but I'm assuming it's dangerous."

The sharp, earthy smell made him wrinkle his nose, "It's scotch."

Sherry turned to look at him like he was crazy, "You're kidding, right? It smells like furniture cleaner."

"Very expensive furniture cleaner," he laughed, bending down to examine an unbroken bottle, "This is real high end stuff."

"You couldn't pay me to drink something that smells like that," Sherry snorted.

Smiling, he picked up the bottle, figuring that there was no harm in keeping it. After the past six months a drink would be nice, once they were safe that was.

That was a good idea actually, celebrating once they were free and safe.

"How about this then, when we get out of here and find a place to lay low we can have a drink to celebrate. Tell me what you like and I'll get it for you."

"I've never actually drank before," she admitted, sounding sad of all things, "I never really did much of anything."

"Well, we can change that," he said, offering the bottle to her and trying not to laugh when she backed away, looking at him like he was trying to poison her.

They were fortunate enough not to encounter any further difficulty as they made their way through the building.

It was dark outside when they emerged onto the streets of a city in chaos. There were no people, or at least no living people. Bodies littered the streets and several zombies shuffled around, not yet having noticed them.

Of all the places to end up, the middle of a city was either the best or worst possible outcome. The buildings around them still had power, but the streets were blocked off with hastily made barricades. Something bad had gone down very recently.

For a time they simply stood in place, listening to the screams and gunfire all around them. The wind carried on it the acrid smell of smoke causing his eyes to water.

"Let's just find a place to rest for now," he coughed, "Figure out what's going on and come up with a plan from there."

Sherry nodded, the eyes on her shoulders wide as she stared up at the buildings and all around her as though she didn't know where to look first, "It's like the end of the world out here."

Somewhere in the distance sirens wailed and Jake smiled, "That's good for us, in all the confusion it'll be easier to hide."

Easier for both of them maybe. J'avo in Edonia, zombies in whatever city they were in, and who knew what else. They'd needed him for a vaccine, but maybe it was too late for that. He could make it work, he'd made it through some bad situations and this wasn't the worst. If it was bad he'd find a way to make things work for him, no, for the two of them. If they played things right Sherry might not have any reason to be worried about what she was. Hell, in an absolute worst case scenario, things like her might not be all that uncommon.

Together they slowly made their way down a street full of abandoned cars and into a night full of violence and chaos.

Just the place for a fresh start.


	2. Shopping and Conversations

**Notes:** New content starts here! From here on out I'm hoping to post one chapter a week. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.

o0o

Aside from the occasional zombie, the streets were empty. The sounds of combat rang out in the distance, but for now he was more than happy to keep away, at least until he knew who was fighting who and why. And even if picking a side would be beneficial there was still Sherry to worry about. There was no guarantee that the side that would do them the most good would be the one that she'd want to take. Umbrella, with an outbreak this big the BSAA, whoever Sherry was working for, the Chinese government and who knew what else would all be represented. Not taking a side and using the confusion to slink away and lick their wounds was also an option, probably the best option, but they were going to need money for that, money and contacts willing to do what was necessary. Except, judging by the state of things and lack of anything resembling an organized response, getting his money and getting in touch with the right people wasn't going to be an option for a long while. Which left the only choice picking a side to throw their lot in with.

Umbrella and the local government were right out. Provided that his blood was still a prime commodity, Sherry's employers were their best bet. With them he'd at least have a bargaining chip. When he'd named his price they had agreed without too much hesitation which meant he probably should have gone higher, or that they had something planned where they'd never have to pay up. The question was, exactly how far would they be willing to go to get their sample? Where was their cutoff point and what kind of negotiation would they be open to?

What was the going rate for an intelligent, badly used Tyrant class B.O.W. that was only moderately useful in combat?

He glanced over at Sherry, watching as she dispatched with a zombie by hooking her claws into it to pull it close enough to grab with her secondary arms, then twisting its head until its neck snapped. They'd decided to let her deal with the zombies to keep the noise down and to help conserve ammo and she'd quickly developed a technique for it. She hadn't been too happy with the idea at first, but once she got started she'd stopped complaining.

It was yet another of the strange things about her, before and after combat she'd be nervous, fretting over little things, but once she got going she was surprisingly focused. If not for the fact that she was blatantly, dangerously incompetent in other areas and there was no benefit to it for her, he would have thought the whole pathetic little girl thing was just an act. He'd met guys who were just good at killing, but that wasn't what Sherry had going on, otherwise she wouldn't have freaked out when she killed the guard.

She was strange, but that was nothing new. When he'd first met her he'd thought she was crazy.

The last two zombies in the area shuffled towards her and she pounced, slamming the first down onto the pavement and backhanding the other with an almost casual swing of her claws, sending it flying several meters to bounce off of an abandoned car.

He smiled to himself as she smashed in the zombie's skull and closed the distance to the last one in a single leap. This one she dealt with by her usual method of breaking its neck.

Crazy and impressive, especially now. She was a B.O.W., mutated to the point where she was unrecognizable, but for all her brute strength, there was something graceful to the way she moved. Watching her was…not at all what he'd expected it to be like to watch a B.O.W. in action.

Earlier he'd told her that what had happened to her wasn't that bad. Now his words were coming back to haunt him. The J'avo were revolting, there was something about them that was fundamentally wrong, like how some guys were freaked out by zombies to the point where they couldn't fight them. It was a real thing, albeit one he'd never understood. With the J'avo he sort of got it, but he could deal with them as long as he didn't think too much about how he'd injected himself with the C-virus. That was the part that really got to him.

Sherry though, she was worse than any J'avo he'd encountered, but she wasn't revolting at all. To some extent it was that he knew her, but there was more to it than that. Until he'd met her he'd never thought about there being such a thing as a female B.O.W. and now…

She turned to stare back at him, trying to flick the gore off her claws, "I need -"

"Yeah, I know, a gun," he could tell that, even though they were just zombies, dealing with them up close was starting to get to her, especially when she ended up using her claws to kill them. Probably because they were still fresh enough that they bled, not much, but enough that it was smeared across her claws and hands, "But who knows when we'll find one."

It was the mess that got to her more than the fighting, yet another of the strange things about her.

The fresh zombies, the lack of any evidence of an organized response, the power still being on, all hinted at the outbreak having started recently and suddenly. It worked for them, but it was unnerving. If not for the sounds of fighting that were still going on in the distance he'd be a lot more worried. Of course at the moment they were avoiding those sounds because until they knew what was going on and who was doing the fighting it was best to be cautious.

And if anyone saw Sherry there'd be trouble. She was harmless, but there was no telling that from looking at her.

"That too," Sherry laughed, a frantic edge starting to creep back into her tone, "I was going to say I need to stop and rest for a bit though. I'm...this is..."

"Don't worry," he cut her off before she could get herself wound back up again, "We've both been through a lot."

They'd made it out of the business district of whatever city they were in and were in some sort of shopping plaza, a mix of street side stalls, shop fronts and restaurants were all around them. Best of all, the area was relatively free of zombies.

A quick look around and he saw a promising spot, a little cafe with tables set out along the side of the street. They made their way over to the place, Sherry stopping to pick up and right one of the chairs at the nearest table before sitting down. Letting out a shuddering sigh she closed all of her eyes and slumped down in the chair, the claws of her main arms scraping along the ground.

None of the zombies he could see were approaching them yet, so it would probably be safe to leave her there. Besides, there wasn't much a zombie could do to her. That didn't stop him from worrying that she might be attacked though. Physically she was far more capable than him, but emotionally she was a mess. Maybe that was why he was able to feel sorry for a B.O.W. that was able to rip a man in half.

Ripping a man in half and then crying over it.

She was a mess and he was...

He didn't know what he was, lost in a way that he hadn't been since his mother had died. Died and took so many answers to so many questions with her, questions he hadn't even known to ask until it was too late. Sherry had the answers, he knew it, but he didn't want to ask, at least not with her in the state she was. Once she recovered she'd have a lot to explain.

If she recovered.

No, thinking like that was selling her short, she was a tough girl, tougher than he suspected she even knew. She'd been through hell, come out the other side and kept going. Eventually she'd shake it and then he'd get those answers. At that point the question became, did he actually want to know? How would having his suspicions confirmed help him?

He realized that he was way too focused on worrying about eventualities that might never happen and making plans for them in a situation where it was far better to keep his mind on the present. He looked at Sherry, still sitting with her eyes closed, her smaller set of hands gripping the edge of the table.

He needed to stay focused if they wanted to get out of the city alive, Sherry on the other hand needed a distraction.

"Since we're taking a break you want something to eat or drink or something?"

Her eyes snapped open, the ones in her shoulders blinking rapidly, "Sure. Where?"

"Don't worry," he reassured, "I'm not going far and I won't be long."

She looked at the cafe they were outside of, pupils of her new eyes widening until they were almost round, "How? There's no one here."

It took him a moment to figure out what she meant and longer still to realize that she was serious. The idea of walking into the place and just taking what they needed hadn't occurred to her. Yeah she'd probably grown up in a lab, or been grown in one, he still wasn't sure which and had yet to think of a decent way to ask, but that kind of ignorance had to take active effort because it was impossible for her to just be that innocent, wasn't it?

"Look, just stay out here and keep an eye on things, I don't want anything to sneak up on me when I'm in there."

Terror, her expression was one of absolute terror. Back in Edonia she hadn't been this bad, she'd at least been competent, now the idea of waiting less than five meters away while he got something to drink had her paralyzed with fear. It wasn't like he'd even be out of sight. She'd be able to see him through the window because he could see a case of soft drinks inside along the wall.

When the guys he'd been working with mutated they'd all ended up homicidal maniacs and while he was glad that the same hadn't happened to Sherry, the way she was acting didn't make sense.

"What's wrong?" he sighed, hoping that asking wasn't going to make things worse.

"Don't leave me alone, he might..." she trailed off, standing absolutely still as her eyes frantically scanned in all directions.

Jake had the feeling that if she'd still looked human she would have been turning in circles trying to look every way at once. As it was, her eyes rolled wildly back and forth. It told him two things; that she could see a full three hundred-sixty degrees around her and was able to, on some subconscious level, work with it because she wasn't even trying to turn her head. So adjusting to her mutations wasn't the problem, at least not all of it. That left him to focus on what she'd said.

She was afraid of someone specific, but who? Someone from the Umbrella labs? One of the researchers who had overseen whatever had been done to her? Ustanak? She'd mentioned the monster earlier, that it had tormented her while she was trapped in her cell.

Sherry had stopped looking around, instead all her eyes were turned to him.

Clearly he was supposed to say something.

"Don't worry," he shrugged, "He's not here and if he was you'd probably be able to take him."

Whoever he was.

Sherry looked like she was about to argue, then she looked at her hands, both sets, wincing as she spread her claws.

"You..." she grimaced, tapping the claws of her main arms together, "You're right. He's not here and I'm..."

She'd been about to say something, but instead she stared at her claws, bringing her right hand close to her chest so that she could rub at it with the smaller, more nimble hands of the arms there.

They were the one part of her that looked a bit off, stuck at an awkward angle, pulling skin and muscle in unnatural directions when she moved them. If he had to guess he'd say that they weren't fully formed, which got him wondering if her changes were done or if, in time, they'd finish growing into a full set of arms. Was that at least part of what had her so jumpy, the thought that she might continue to mutate? Jake tried to recall everything he knew about B.O.W.s, especially Tyrants, but his knowledge patchy at best. He was pretty sure that they did something with them to keep the virus from mutating them uncontrollably. When he had the chance it was something he'd have to look into, see if it was something he could get for her.

And thinking of Sherry, she seemed to have calmed down, or so he hoped. It was always possible that she was having a very quiet breakdown. If she was he'd find out after he got something to eat.

She was still looking at her hands when he went inside the cafe. Walking past the cooler he grabbed a bottled water and took a sip. Ignoring a display of chips, candy and other garbage he walked behind the counter and into the back to see what he could find in terms of actual food. He poked around in different coolers and cabinets until he managed to make himself a plate of fairly decent sandwiches. If Sherry wanted something hot she was out of luck. He didn't know how good a zombie's sense of smell was, but he didn't want to test it by actually cooking anything.

When he came back to the front Sherry was leaning over the counter, waiting anxiously for him.

"How are we going to pay?" she clicked her claws against the counter and wrung her smaller set of hands nervously.

He took a bite of a sandwich and then offered her one.

"Why?" he mumbled around the mouthful.

Sherry looked back and forth between him the sandwich while the eyes in her shoulders looked around the room. He couldn't see it, but he was willing to bet that the one eye in her back was darting back and forth as well.

Showing her teeth in what might have been a nervous grin or an embarrassed smile she reached for the sandwich with her claws, stopped half way and corrected herself, taking it in one of her smaller hands.

Finishing in four bites she hesitantly reached out for another.

Rolling his eyes he passed her a sandwich.

She looked at it, the eyes in her shoulders fixed on him.

Keeping track of all the eyes was giving him a headache. He wasn't quite sure where he should be looking at any given time.

"I'm thirsty," she whispered.

"Cooler's there," he pointed behind her.

"Oh," she didn't turn around, didn't need to, "Right and I can..."

She shuffled over to it. He watched her hook the door open with her claws, take a bottle of soda and carefully close the door, the eye on her back looking in every direction but at him.

She drank the soda, finished the second sandwich and then looked at the rack of candy bars on the counter, "Can I..."

"You don't need my permission," he struggled not to laugh at her, wondering if she realized how absurd the whole situation was. They'd escaped from an Umbrella lab into a city full of zombies during what, for all he knew, was the end of the world, and she was worried about stealing a few sandwiches and a candy bar.

Watching him like she expected him to say something, she took a candy bar and ate it.

He could tell that she was getting ready to say something, but she thought better of it and instead took another candy bar.

It seemed like their situation was finally starting to sink in.

When she was done she looked down at the floor, the eyes in her shoulders staring past him, out the window.

How she managed to do all that without getting dizzy was beyond him, but she did. The J'avo did too, some of them were even fairly good shots, so maybe extra eyes weren't a big deal when you had them.

"I was wondering..." she let out a nervous little laugh. Nervous, not hysterical, so that was a good thing, "I saw some shops with clothes out there."

He rolled his eyes. She was a B.O.W., but clearly she was a woman through and through. Thinking about shopping at a time like this, "Is it really that important?"

"Yes," she sounded indignant, though she still wasn't making actual eye contact, "I mean..."

She gestured helplessly at herself.

He couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed it before, but now that she'd pointed it out her couldn't not notice. She was completely naked.

Yeah he'd had a lot of other things on his mind, like escaping and not getting killed by B.O.W.s or zombies, but still.

He'd seen it all when he was taking stock of her changes, trying to make sense of her, but now he was actually seeing her.

And it was hard to look away for all the wrong reasons.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

She'd been a cute girl before, nothing exceptional, but now the kindest thing he could say was that she wasn't repulsive.

Leaving the café they went over to where various stores and stalls had been selling clothing. Most of them still had their wares on display, waiting for customers that would never come, though some of the stalls had been damaged in the confusion and several of the stores had zombies trapped inside.

Sherry took one look at the zombies, watching as they scrabbled against the display windows of the stores in their attempts to get to them and went straight to the stalls lining the far part of the road. Their offerings weren't as good, but she knew better than to try and go inside a building full of zombies just for the sake of clothing shopping. Even if it was obvious by the way that she was looking at some of the stores that she was tempted.

Jake was tempted to mention that she probably wouldn't find anything that would fit her, but he held his tongue and instead stood watch for zombies while Sherry moved from stall to stall, looking at all the designer knockoffs that had been for sale and were now free for the taking. Given the circumstances, she was the only one there to take advantage of it, but that was neither here nor there.

She'd managed to find a pair of shorts that almost fit her and had moved on to trying on shoes. He would have told her to hurry up if not for the fact that she was visibly more relaxed than she had been and it wasn't like he had anywhere better to go. Not having any plans meant that there wasn't any reason to hurry, besides, it gave him time to gather his thoughts, think over some of the conversations he'd overheard. Lots of talk about antibodies, refining viruses, and stuff like that. Albert Wesker came up a lot too, but that was kind of expected, Umbrella and all that.

It bugged him though. He wasn't the sort to jump to conclusions, but it seemed like everyone had known that his blood would be valuable but him.

"Hey," not the best conversation starter, but he had no idea how to casually lead up to what he wanted to ask.

Sherry stopped pondering a pair of sneakers to look up at him, "Yes?"

For a moment he considered telling her that she was only making things worse. Again, not the best was to start a conversation. Until she'd started trying stuff on it had been easy for him to overlook the fact that she wasn't that bad looking. He'd never thought about there being such thing as a female B.O.W. before, much less that he'd end up falling for one.

Life was fucked up that way and the conversation he was hoping to have would probably show just how fucked up it could get.

"Why exactly were you looking for me?"

Suddenly her eyes were looking everywhere but at him.

Why did he need to have it confirmed? Did he really think that hearing it from her would make things better?

"Because," she glanced down, decided on the pair of shoes she wanted and sat down to struggle to get them on and tied, "The antibodies in your blood. Like I told you in Edonia, they might be useful for curing all sorts of viruses."

It was the most awkward attempt at being evasive imaginable and he was being just as bad, trying to ask in the most obtuse way.

"How did you know?"

Because saying it outright would sound crazy, would make him sound crazy.

"Where to find you?" she managed to get one of the shoes tied and moved on to the other, "It was a lot of work. Figuring that your mother went back to Edonia was a good start, but from there...Muller is a pretty common last name, but you were the right age so it lined up well enough. One of the labs managed to get a blood sample somehow, run some tests and find some distinctive genetic markers. They really didn't tell me too much about the science stuff and I didn't ask. After that is was a matter of tracking down the company you were working with and...here we are."

She shrugged helplessly and showed her teeth in a smile that made it painfully clear that this was a conversation that she didn't want to be having, which was tough for her. After all he'd been through a little honesty would go a long way.

"The right age for what? What lined up?" he continued to press the matter without actually asking the actual question. He needed to hear it from her first so he'd know what he thought about it, "This isn't about my mom."

"No," Sherry turned away from him to look longingly at a stall of brightly colored sundresses, "Do you think..."

The one she was running her hands over was off-white and patterned with blobby looking yellow flowers.

"No," but there was a sort of blueish one that he thought might have looked good on her, except that the extra arms and eyes meant that it would never fit anyway, "And you're not going change the topic like that. Back to what we're talking about, why me?"

"Jake," she pleaded, "You don't need to. It won't change anything."

"I got dragged into this, I've got a right to know," he paused long enough to look around and check how close the nearest zombies were getting. A group of about twenty had started moving in their direction. They were going to have to get moving soon, "How did you know I was the one?"

"It was just a guess," she continued to look at the dresses, or maybe stare at her claws as she ran them over the fabric, "There were half a dozen other possible candidates, you were just the most likely, the only actual genetic match, but Jake..."

She trailed off, staring at her claws.

"Kind of explains things though, doesn't it?" he laughed bitterly, "Every shitty decision I made in my life, every choice that brought me here, what I've done, what I'm capable of doing. I'd thought I was just a terrible person, but there's more to it than that, isn't there? I'm just following –"

"Jake!" Sherry's plea cut him off. She was still staring fixedly at her claws and it took her several attempts before she was able to continue, "We're not our parents. We're the choices we make. They made their choices and what happened happened. We've got to live with it, but we can do better than they did. We can fix things."

It would have been a more stirring speech if she wasn't begging the question and if her voice hadn't rose at the end, turning the last statement into a question itself.

"Yeah," he spat, disgusted at his own cowardice for not simply asking and accepting whatever answer he got, "We can fix things."

Because he was a real good example of making the right choices. Pissed off as the conversation had left him, it had given him plenty to think about. Even without giving an answer she'd confirmed his worst suspicions, but there was more to it than that. She hadn't told him that he wasn't his father, that he was a better person, instead she'd put herself in the same boat as him. So what the hell had her parents done that was anywhere remotely near trying to wipe out humanity like Wesker had?

And his mom had reassured him countless times that his father was a good man, that he hadn't abandoned them and that maybe someday he'd get things fixed and come back for them. She'd insisted that his father would be so proud of him, that she was sure he'd be thrilled to know he had a son.

Then again she'd died before all the shit that went down in Africa, so there was that. It was probably for the best that way.

She'd said his father was a good man.

There had been times he'd wanted to believe her, times he'd imagined what it would be like to have a father. Hell, towards the end he'd been infected by his mom's hope that his mysteriously absent, rich American father would show up and fix everything.

Then she'd died and he'd gone back to hating his father for not being there, hoping that he was dead and wondering what he'd do to the man if he got the chance to meet him.

Now he knew the truth. As he'd hoped, his father was dead, far more recently than he'd suspected and he had a lot more reason to hate the man.

But it was the same petty resentment that he felt more than anything else, that he'd abandoned the two of them, left them to fend for themselves.

Sherry looked anxiously from him to the advancing zombies, "Jake."

"You're right," he picked up the backpack he'd taken from one of the stands. At the moment all it had in it was a few bottles of water and the bottle of scotch he'd taken from the Umbrella facility, but he hoped that eventually they'd come across more ammo or something else useful, "We've got to get moving."

"Okay," she showed a lot more teeth this time. If he had to guess he'd say it was probably supposed to be an encouraging smile. Or maybe she was just relieved. He was still getting the hang of reading her expressions. With her eyes he could sort of guess, but her face didn't give him much to work with, "Where to?"

"Not sure, away from them," he set a hard pace, not that Sherry had any trouble keeping up. She was a tough little thing, or had been. Now she wasn't so little, "But don't think you can just guilt me into going along with you."

"What?" Sherry came to a dead stop, all eyes wide.

"Yeah," he smiled at her bewildered expression, "It was a nice enough little speech you gave and all, but I'm not giving my blood up for free after all I've been through."

"Jake -"

He didn't even let her get started with whatever 'it's the right thing to do' argument she was thinking of, "I've decided that I'm not going to let you end up back in whatever place they were keeping you locked up before they sent you after me. They want my blood, they're going to have to let you go. So here's the deal, you contact your boss, let him know we're both still alive and find out how much I'm worth to him."

More than a single Tyrant class B.O.W. he was willing to bet. If Sherry even was a Tyrant, the more he looked at her, the more he doubted it. Tyrants were at least supposed to look sort of human.

She didn't even attempt to argue with that, instead she took a more practical approach, "How am I supposed to do that?"

He had to give her credit for that one, it was a good question, albeit one that really showed how little consideration she was giving to the situation, "Everyone carries a cellphone nowadays. It's just a matter of looking around until we find one. You've got your boss' number, right?"

"Yes, of course!" She seemed outraged that he'd suggest otherwise. Of course she was also unaware of how clueless she seemed most of the time.

They searched bodies as they moved, or at least he did, Sherry seemed unwilling to touch any of the corpses littering the streets, regarding them as though she suspected that they might get up and attack if she got too close. Then again, considering they were in the middle of a zombie outbreak he couldn't blame her for that.

In less than ten minutes he'd found her a phone that still had a full charge in its battery, more than enough for her to take care of things. He handed it to her, she fumbled with it for several seconds before she was able to punch in the numbers. Holding it was difficult for her, but she managed, only to scowl.

"It's not working," she held the phone out to him as though she expected him to fix it.

"Did you put in 001 first?" he sighed, it was either that or 011. He wasn't exactly sure because he hadn't ever needed to make a phone call to America from China before. Worst case scenario they'd have to keep trying until they got it right.

Sherry tried again and this time the call went through, giving him the chance to listen to half of a very uninformative conversation.

"It's me, Sherry Birkin.

Yes, in China I think.

No, it is China.

I know.

I don't know where.

A cellphone.

Okay.

Yes."

It went on like that for several more minutes. Some irrelevant names and phrases were thrown in, probably for her to prove who she was, before the conversation got interesting.

"Yes, Jake Muller is with me.

Umbrella.

No, he's fine.

No.

No.

I don't think so.

Yes.

Really?

Here?

That close!

Wow!

Of course!

As soon as I can."

When the conversation was over Sherry held the phone up for Jake to look at. There was a map on the screen with a route highlighted.

She was grinning ear to ear, which was a lot less frightening than it should have been considering how long and sharp her teeth were and how many of them she had.

"You're not going to believe it!" she all but danced, "Derek is actually here in China right now! He came to track down Ada Wong because of her involvement in Umbrella coming back. We can meet with him and -"

Her smile faltered.

"Start negotiations in person," Jake picked up immediately when she fell silent, "Everything else we can deal with once we get there. They know you're alive and that you have me. That's all that matters."

"Right," she nodded, not quite hopeful, but not too distressed either, "We can deal with..."

"Exactly," he cut her off again, "For now we just need to focus on making it there in one piece.

They continued on together with Sherry setting the pace as she followed the directions on the phone.

It was amazing what a difference having a goal made.

Jake wondered if she realized what he had, that it was awfully convenient that her boss was there and after the same people that had been holding the two of them captive. It might have been a coincidence, but he wasn't too sure if he believed in that kind of luck. Not after learning the truth about who his father had been.

Who he was.


	3. An Awkward Reunion

**Notes:** A big thank you to Johnclaw Dragonhelm, who helped me with some editing, catching some mistakes that I'd missed. Also thanks to DarkGidora who, in addition to being great for bouncing ideas off of, is a wonderful, evil muse. And of course, thank you to everyone who is reading this. If you like it or want to read similar things, please check out my collection of mostly one-shots, _Teratogenesis_. If you see something you like there, please shoot me a review and let me know. It might inspire me to continue a piece there or give me an idea for something new.

o0o

Sherry kept one set of eyes on the phone at all times, constantly checking the map.

Jake's biggest concern was that it would run out of battery before they made it with how often she was checking it. Derek, Sherry's boss, was less than ten miles away, amazingly, fortunately close by considering how large China was. That sort of luck was either impossibly good or suspicious and Jake knew which he thought was the case. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it.

An American government official, part of an organization that used B.O.W.s, just deciding to show up in China right in the middle of an outbreak, not too far from an Umbrella facility. Maybe he was cynical, but that sort of thing didn't happen by coincidence.

Then again maybe his luck was just that shitty. This was the second large scale bioterror incident he'd ended up in the middle of.

Now that they had a plan they weren't even bothering to fight the zombies that they came across, which was fine by him. There was no way that they could clear the whole city so stopping to try and fight off zombies would only be a waste of time.

Every time they came across a car that wasn't totaled Sherry would look at it, checking to see if the keys were still in the ignition.

After the fifth time of her repeating the process of looking in and testing to see if the doors were unlocked he had to say something.

"Stop it."

She looked at him, her expression unreadable, but her posture the picture of frustration, "It'll be faster if-"

"I know, but look," he gestured at the road around them, filled with cars, some wrecked, some abandoned, some with zombies trapped inside moaning and thrashing against seatbelts or clawing futilely at the glass, "Even if we get a car what good is it going to do? The roads are completely blocked off."

"Maybe once we get to the highway," she offered hopefully, "We're almost there."

"Maybe," he didn't share her optimism, but whatever happened the highway had to be better that the side streets they'd been picking their way through.

The farther they went on the more densely packed the cars in the streets until even the sidewalks were jammed up, forcing them to climb over cars with increasing frequency. As with most things, it started out difficult for Sherry and got easier as she got the hang of it.

Watching her was interesting.

She was oddly built for a B.O.W. She wasn't small like a Hunter class, or dexterous like a Tyrant, but she was versatile.

If anything she was built for climbing or difficult terrain with the way her main set of arms were jointed and their impressive range of movement. Considering the location where she'd found him and the situations they ended up in it made sense. Send in a small B.O.W. that looked perfectly human, good for retrieval purposes for sure because if she'd come in like the thing that had been chasing them, Ustanak, he sure as hell wouldn't have stopped to listen to her. Then, when things got bad it mutated into something highly mobile and good for close range combat because the more he watched her the more he became convinced that Umbrella had little to nothing to do with what she'd become. How she looked didn't line up with the latest batch of monsters that had been cooked up, they were all more human looking, at least at first and even the extra eyes didn't match, huge red ones all over the place instead of clusters of bug eyes bursting out of her face.

It was because they were expressive, he tried to tell himself, that's why they didn't bother him, why he could see them as endearing, even attractive.

Climbing gracefully over a four car pileup that blocked off the entire street she crouched on the top, main set of arms spread wide for balance as she reached down with her smaller set to help him up. They were the one thing about her that still looked feminine and he thought it was...kind of cute.

Not the arms, but the entirety of her.

Then she grabbed took him by the hand and pulled him up onto the car before he could even start trying to climb.

She certainly was strong and as she helped him down the other side his thoughts once again turned dark, which was better than what he'd been thinking.

He was slowing her down. It was the end of the fucking world here, so of course a B.O.W. would be better able to handle it, but she was the one setting the pace and he had to struggle to keep up. It would have been one thing if she was anything other than Sherry, but she was still very much the same girl that he'd met back in Edonia.

An intelligent, sane B.O.W., which was more than could be said about the J'avo. Intelligent, sure, sane, not so much.

That was what made her so frightening. If she got back and they started making more like her, because for all its anti-B.O.W. rhetoric and attempted cover-ups, America was nothing if not hypocritical. In fact the more he thought about it, the more sure he became. No one in their right mind would scrap a weapons project like Sherry once they had a couple dozen like her they'd kick the BSAA out of the country, shred every nonproliferation agreement they'd signed and start rolling them out by the platoon. Then all he'd be good for was vaccines.

Yeah, that was what he'd keep telling himself, that his reasons for wanting to keep Sherry around were purely selfish. It was a lot easier to think of what he wanted to do as buying a B.O.W. because that was something people actually did. The idea that it was because he'd gotten kind of attached to her, that she was still as attractive to him as she'd been when they'd first met, maybe even more so now? Absolutely unthinkable.

Normal crazy people bought and sold B.O.W.s all the time.

Those same crazy people could admire a well-made B.O.W. for being a functional, possibly even elegant, piece of equipment.

No one gave thought to having a long-term relationship with one.

No one stood in the middle of an Umbrella facility and made a really awkward attempt at suggesting to a B.O.W. that, when things calmed down, they go out drinking with them.

His awkward attempt at asking her out had gone right over Sherry's head, thankfully.

A little further on they turned a corner and found what had to be the source of the problem, a truck far too large for the small side streets, crashed and turned onto its side. It blocked off the entire street from one side of the sidewalk to the other.

Sherry had no problem climbing up onto the side of it and then turned around to offer him a hand.

"There's an onramp right past here," she said cheerfully as she pulled him up, "It should be easy going from there. Maybe we can even find a car. Then it shouldn't take us much more than half an hour."

Somewhere in the city, thankfully far from where they were, there was an explosion. Nothing out of the ordinary, just another part of being in a warzone or the end of the world.

He looked past her, "Maybe."

From the top of the truck they got a good look at what lay ahead. About twenty meters of absolutely clear road, and then, at the next intersection the cars were packed absolutely solid in literal bumper to bumper traffic.

"It might not be that bad up close," Sherry said quickly, jumping down from the truck, landing on all fours and getting up to catch him when he jumped down after her.

Putting him down she sprinted the distance to the traffic jam.

He walked after her, not seeing any reason to hurry if what he suspected to be the case was true.

She was wrong.

So was he.

It was much worse.

The sight was the most surreal thing they'd encountered so far, as was the sound. Everything had happened recently enough that some of the cars were still running. Packed as closely as they were, the people inside had been unable to open their doors and get out when whatever happened reached them.

Zombies clawed at partially open doors, trying to pull themselves free, slammed their heads against windows and windshields, leaving streaks of gore against the cracked glass.

Not everyone had turned.

It looked like the virus had the typical one-in-ten chance of immunity which meant that some of the trapped zombies were busy eating what was left of their loved ones. Fortunately in those cars the glass was covered in blood, making it impossible to see what was going on inside.

Those weren't the worst though.

The worst was the screaming in the cars where solitary human occupants were trapped.

Sherry let out a small gasp and grabbed his shoulder with her hands, pawing awkwardly at him with the slaws of her main arms as though she wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

It was pretty bad, but he was already working make sense of the situation.

The people trapped in their cars had been turned. There was no way for the zombies to get to them, so they couldn't have been bitten.

That meant it was airborne. It was recent so there were probably still traces of it. Sherry was fine because of whatever it was that she was already infected with. He was fine because it was yet another thing he was immune to thanks to who his father was. Were there any other ways he took after the man? Was that the reason why he'd made the choices he had, choices that had brought him to where he was now.

"We've got to..." Sherry whimpered, gesturing helplessly at the expanse of cars in front of them.

"No."

He knew exactly what she meant and there was no way they could go out there and try and rescue trapped survivors. There would be too many of them and it wouldn't do any good anyway. Let them out and they'd be eaten by zombies.

"We don't have time to save them all," he put his hand on her arm, "We've got to get to your boss, get a vaccine made before this happens somewhere else."

If it wasn't already happening somewhere else. Maybe the release was global.

"But..."

"We heard gunshots earlier, that means that the military or the police are out there killing zombies or looking for survivors. Someone'll come and rescue them," he lied with a smile. It was easier than telling her the truth, that if help came it would probably come too late for most of them, that they'd haunt her for a long time, but eventually she'd get used to it, accept that there were times when you had to leave things, people behind.

She believed him.

"We can't climb over them," she looked out at the arms reaching out of so many of the cars, clawing at empty air, "Because..."

Yeah, she'd probably be fine jumping from car to car, using her claws to cut off any of those hands that grabbed her, but the last thing he wanted was to misstep and get pulled in and... "Let's turn back. It looks like some of the side streets we were on run sort of parallel to the highway. It'll be slower and safer."

She nodded and followed him.

He was leading the way again.

Sherry was lagging behind, turning to look over her shoulder every few steps.

"Keep going," he urged, "Just don't look back and try not to -"

Sherry let out another of her little whimpers, the sound somewhere between a sobbing child and a wounded animal.

Fuck.

The eye in her back.

Would apologizing make him more or less of an asshole?

The silence between them continued to grow.

Gunshots echoed through the night, closer than any they'd heard previously.

Sherry froze, trying to pinpoint the direction the sound was coming from, a sort of frantic hope shining in her eyes, "Jake! We need to reach them, tell them about the highway!"

Brushing past him she took off at a full out run, leaping over cars and down the street.

"Sherry! Wait! Slow down! You can't -"

But it was already too late.

Because whoever they found was sure to be friendly and wouldn't be at all bothered by a B.O.W. charging them.

If it was the cops or the god damned military and they shot her...

They might not kill her, but...

Poor Sherry.

He couldn't let something like that happen to her.

Swearing to himself, at himself, for being the one to put the idea in her head in the first place, he took off running after her.

Chasing a B.O.W. through a zombie infested city wasn't a situation he'd ever imagined himself being in, being chased by one maybe, but never chasing one. Especially not in a desperate attempt to keep it, her, from getting hurt.

The problem was she was too damned trusting and she never stopped to think that maybe not everyone was as good a person as she was. Even if by some chance whoever was out there was every bit as stupidly kind and optimistic as she was, it wasn't like they'd give a B.O.W., especially not one that looked like her, the benefit of the doubt.

Turning a corner down a street choked with cars he lost her. The way she could effortlessly climb over obstacles meant that it had only been a matter of time, to say nothing of the way she could bat zombies out of the way without any trouble at all. Meanwhile he had to make his way around the cars and try and avoid zombies for the sake of conserving ammo. Once he caught up with her he was going to have to make it clear to her that what she was doing was stupid and dangerous, that she had to learn to stop and think. He wanted to blame it on her being a B.O.W., but she'd been that way when they first met as well.

Hell, he could still blame it on her being a B.O.W.

For the time being he just had to focus on following her, which was easier than he would have expected. It was just a matter of following the trail of claw marks and dead zombies as she dealt with anything that got in her way as she hurried towards whoever was shooting a gun.

The gunshots stopped.

Not good, either whoever it was had run out of ammo, died, or Sherry had found them.

Sherry screamed, a cry of shock.

The unmistakable garbled shouting of J'avo followed.

It hadn't even occurred to him that there would be J'avo roaming the streets, unless they were working for Umbrella, part of a group sent out to recapture the two of them.

Something let out a loud rasping noise and Sherry screamed again, sounding more angry than frightened this time.

Swearing to himself Jake pushed himself to run faster, hoping that he arrived in time.

Arriving at the source of the commotion he found an alleyway where Sherry had managed to corner a pair of J'avo and some sort of strange lizardy looking thing that resembled nothing more than an umbrella made of membranous frills. Not the most threatening looking B.O.W. he'd encountered, especially when it smashed itself into the wall trying to get past Sherry. The J'avo, though armed, were holding their fire, probably waiting for the B.O.W. to get out of the way and give them a clear shot.

Given the situation it was no surprise that his arrival went unnoticed, which was probably the one good thing about it all.

Taking out the pistol he'd liberated from the Umbrella facility he fired off three shots in rapid succession at the J'avo farthest from Sherry. The first caught it in the throat, the second got the right side of its face and the third went wide when the J'avo leapt out of the way.

It tried to return fire, but it was blinded by the steam pouring from its injuries. Jake had seen how fast the things regenerated and knew it wouldn't last for long. He'd have to take advantage of the opportunity while it lasted.

Sherry was a larger, closer target and the J'avo went for her.

Jake couldn't tell how many times it managed to hit her before she shoved the lizard B.O.W. out of the way and charged it, all he knew was that the wail she let out would haunt his dreams. It wasn't any sort of sound that a human would make, nor was it the roar of an enraged B.O.W.

She let her momentum carry her straight into the J'avo and kept going until she hit the wall. The J'avo kept shooting her until it ran out of ammo and Sherry kept screaming the whole time, steam from where her claws dug into it scalding her as she gutted it and then smashed its skull into a pulp.

By this point both the J'avo he'd shot and the lizard thing had recovered and decided that he made a better target than Sherry.

The lizard half hunched over, half crouched and made an ungainly, hopping charge at him only to stop several feet away and spread its layers of frills, revealing the spines and barbed, multi-jointed limbs that backed them. Its threat display effectively blocked the J'avo's view of him and several bullets tore through the frills. Either it didn't notice, or didn't care, because it kept its attention on him, frills rustling as the little claws at the end of the twitching appendages that ringed its neck hooked onto spines and pulled them free.

He barely managed to dodge in time to avoid getting impaled by the B.O.W.s' quills that it threw at him.

Hissing, it opened its mouth and darted forward.

In a pure reflexive shot he got it right in its open mouth, which worked to stun it. The thing tripped over its own feet and landed in a crumpled heap at his feet, giving him the opportunity to stomp on it, spines and frills snapping with a satisfying crunch.

Unfortunately the J'avo now had a clear shot at him and with as many eyes as it had, it wasn't likely to miss.

It knew it too, laughing as it carefully took aim, only for Sherry to come up behind it and claw it across the back. Yelling in incoherent rage it spun around just in time for her to drive her claws through its skull and pull.

She didn't manage to rip its head off, but she came close.

The lizard tried to get up and he shot it once more in the head, which seemed to do the trick. It thrashed wildly, tearing its frills and breaking the insectile limbs that backed them before finally falling still.

"I messed up," Sherry laughed nervously, wincing as she took a step towards him, "I got a gun though."

She held up the pistol that she'd managed to wrestle away from the J'avo she'd charged.

That was a relief, the J'avo hadn't been shooting her in the stomach, it had been the other way around. She must have pulled the gun from its hands before it had the chance to react.

The places where the J'avo's blood had scalded her were already healing, but as she got closer he saw that the lizard B.O.W. had gotten her with a volley of spines before he arrived.

Letting out a hiss of pain she grabbed one and pulled it free. The next one she grabbed at a bad angle and it broke. Her claws weren't flexible enough to grab the thin spines and the way her secondary limbs were positioned meant that they had such a limited range of movement that the majority of the spines were impossible for her to reach.

"Stop it before you hurt yourself," he hurried forward into the alley, "Let me get them."

As he pulled the spines free from her arms and chest he looked around, trying to figure out exactly what it was that Sherry had stumbled across.

The J'avo weren't in uniforms or suits, these ones looked like ordinary street thugs, and dead zombies littered the area, some of them had been shot, others were riddled with quills.

Falling back to what he knew about J'avo, which was that they were crazy and violent, he figured that they'd been having a bit of fun killing zombies and Sherry had ended up running headlong into the middle of it.

The B.O.W. that had been with them might have been some sort of extreme J'avo mutation. He'd seen some pretty strange ones and the frills around its neck did look kind of like giant fly wings and its tail was kind of segmented looking.

So the real question was how they'd ended up infected and for the life of him he couldn't come up with anything decent to explain any of it.

Too many coincidences for it to be anything other than deliberate, but who had done it and why? It might have been part of some sort of diversion, Edonia all over again, but that didn't really give a useful answer.

How many other groups might there be out there that wanted him?

More gunfire, this time uncomfortably close, maybe one street over from where they were.

Sherry tensed.

"I'm almost done, then we get the hell out of here," he said, patting her on the arm as he yanked the last few quills out of her. Deep as they'd gone in, the holes left by the quills were small enough that by the time he'd pulled the next one out the hole from the previous one had closed, "Are you hurt?"

"No, they're pretty thin and really sharp so as long as I don't try and move or brush them against anything it's not horrible," Sherry bowed her head, "It just feels kind of weird not being able to heal around them."

What could he say to that? Changing the subject felt like the safest course of action.

"So which way from here?" he listened intently, but there was no further shooting.

Sherry fumbled to take the phone out of her pants pocket, "I think -"

"I'm telling you, I heard someone scream."

A woman's voice, speaking English, not too far from where they were.

"Even if you did we might be too late," a male voice this time.

"No," Sherry dropped the phone, "That can't..."

"What?" Jake tried to push her farther back into the alley. Whoever was heading their way sounded human, which meant that he was going to have to deal with them.

Sherry remained immobile, standing on her tiptoes as she looked past him.

"Someone killed all these zombies."

The woman.

"Something. Look at this one."

The man.

"I heard shooting."

The woman again.

They were getting closer.

"There's one way to find out," the man sounded exasperated, "Anyone out there?"

The last bit was shouted

"Leon!" the woman scolded, "You don't know -

"Leon!" Sherry's excited squeal drowned out the rest of what the woman was saying

"Don't," Jake warned, too late for it to matter.

Jake found himself utterly at a loss at the sight of the man and woman that rushed to the entrance of the alleyway. He wasn't sure if he'd been expecting agents from the D.S.O. since Sherry seemed to know the man, or what, but neither of the pair was what he'd imagined. An exhausted looking woman in a tank top, vest and dress slacks and a man in jeans and a leather jacket. They didn't look like members of any government organization that he could think of, or any organization at all for that matter.

The man was staring past him at Sherry, his expression an odd mixture of disbelief and recognition.

"You...here...but..." the man stammered, growing pale.

The woman drew her gun.

Only then did Sherry seem to realize how badly wrong the situation had the potential to go and took a step back. Jake on the other hand had been painfully aware of from the start. He was dressed in an Umbrella security uniform standing in a dark alley with a barely human looking B.O.W. behind him.

"Sherry, introductions," Jake snapped when he realized that she was trying to hide behind him, "Now!"

Behind him Sherry shifted her weight and muttered something unintelligible.

From the way the man, Leon, was looking at Sherry he might have known her from somewhere, but the woman he was with was ready to start shooting.

"How did you find us?" the woman demanded in a tone that let Jake know she was used to having people snap to attention when she spoke.

"You found us," Jake said quickly, "We were looking for survivors."

He'd added the last part because in most situations that was a good way to show that you meant well, only to realize that, given the circumstances, it could easily be misinterpreted since he was wearing an Umbrella uniform and walking around with a B.O.W.

Sure enough the woman leveled her gun on him, though Jake couldn't help but notice that her aim wavered slightly as she looked back and forth between him and Sherry, weighing the situation.

"You knew our names," she steadied herself, focusing on him.

She had a gun, he had a B.O.W. and somehow he was the one at a disadvantage.

"I've got no clue who the hell you are. Sherry," Jake noted the way Leon tensed at the name, "Recognized your voice. She's the one who knows you."

"Sherry?" Leon spoke slowly, in a tone that had Jake wondering if he was on something or just stupid.

The sound of his voice snapped her out of her daze.

"Leon! You have no idea how glad I am to see you here!" she sounded equal parts happy and confused, "But what are you doing here?"

"It can talk?" now the woman seemed confused. Unfortunately Sherry's words had the opposite effect on Leon, outrage replacing his earlier indecision as he raised his gun and took aim at Jake.

"What the hell did you do to her?" Leon demanded.

Before Jake could even attempt to explain that he had no clue what was going on the woman interjected.

"You know that thing?" her tone was accusatory rather than shocked, hinting at an unknown dynamic to the situation, "Leon, what's going on?"

Why was it that the past year of his life seemed hell bent on proving that there was no situation so bad that it couldn't get worse? Leon clearly knew Sherry, but his partner just as obviously didn't and wasn't at all pleased with the situation. Jake couldn't blame her for that, he just wished that Sherry had stopped to think before calling the pair over.

Leon took one hand off his gun to make what Jake had always considered the universal gesture of 'hold your fire, I'm about to do something stupid'.

"I want answers, now," Leon's tone was low, dangerous.

"Join the club."

Leon glared at him.

Jake realized that he'd spoken out loud. Too late to take it back, best to keep going, "Sherry knows you, you obviously know her. I have no clue who you are or where you know her from, so I'm the one who's out of the loop here."

"Everyone, please calm down!" Sherry grabbed at Jake with her secondary arms, putting her hands on his shoulders, "Jake, that's Leon. Leon, this is Jake Muller."

Taking a chance, because with how tense the situation was, any movement was risky, Jake reached up and put a hand on top of hers. The whole situation depended on her ability to explain things and that simple gesture was the best that he could do to help.

"Remember how in my last email I mentioned that I was working for the D.S.O?"

Leon nodded slowly, still trying to piece together the situation, "I thought someone had to call in some serious favors for that, but you didn't mention...and Claire never..."

"Oh." Sherry's voice was barely even a whisper. Jake could feel her slump down behind him.

Wonderful, if she had another breakdown he was dead.

"This...I...," Sherry stammered. Jake gave her hand a little squeeze which seemed to help. Taking a deep breath she continued, "I was...I wasn't like this until a few months ago. We got captured by Umbrella and..."

Leon might have been willing to listen, but his partner was looking increasingly skeptical.

"Start at the beginning," Jake prompted.

"Right. Like I said, I'm working with the D.S.O.," she started out strong, "My first assignment had me in Edonia to find Jake because...there was reason to believe that he had antibodies that could be used for making a vaccine for the C-virus. I found him, but we were pursued by a B.O.W., Ustanak and...We were captured. They took us to a lab near here and for six months they...I managed to escape and...Jake found me and..."

"She's bringing me to her boss now so we can start with the whole vaccine thing," Jake finished for her, hoping that the implication that Sherry technically had him in custody would help them overlook the fact that he was dressed like he worked for Umbrella, "What are you doing here?"

"We're after the one behind this whole mess," Leon practically growled, giving Jake a sense of exactly how bad things were, "It's way worse than you're going to believe. Sherry..."

He trailed off, lowering his gun.

Leon was obviously an American and Americans typically didn't get bent out of shape over what happened in other countries which meant the outbreak was global. So Edonia, China, American and who knew where else. It really was the end of the world then.

Hoping to turn the situation to his advantage and prove he was one of the 'good guys' Jake nodded, "I've met the bitch, Ada Wong. I owe her one for what she did to-"

He never got to finish.

The woman, whose name he still didn't know, cut him off, "Not her, I don't know what her part in this is yet, but it's not important right now."

Jake felt his stomach sink. Why did he have the feeling he knew exactly who 'he' was? Bad to worse, except this was far worse than he'd ever imagined. If Sherry let slip why she'd been sent after him in the first place, why the D.S.O. knew he had those antibodies...

"Derek C. Simmons the one responsible for all this and more," the woman finished.

"Who?"

But his question was drowned out by Sherry's outraged shout.

The woman realized that an enraged B.O.W. was a much bigger threat than he was and took aim at Sherry. Leon had actually holstered his weapon and wouldn't have time to react.

Jake did the only thing he could think of given the situation.

He tackled the woman just as she was about to pull the trigger.


	4. An Unwelcome Arrival

**Notes:** Sorry this one is a little late, I'm prone to procrastination. Thank you to everyone who's reading this. I really hope you're enjoying it.

o0o

"Helena!"

Leon's warning shout came too late.

Jake was already on top of her, trying to wrestle the gun out of her hands. Whatever her involvement in the whole mess was, whatever organization she worked for, she knew how to fight, but like most brawls he'd been in, in the end it came down to simple brute force. He outweighed her, out muscled her and in the end he was able to twist her wrist and pull the gun out of her hands. After tossing it away it wasn't that hard to pin her down.

Yeah, she got a few good swings in before he had both of her arms immobilized, but nothing that made any difference in the end.

When he looked up he saw that Leon was standing a few feet away, ready to shoot him and Sherry was standing back, looking like she was ready to start crying again.

Of course.

Why had he expected her to do something to help?

These were her friends, maybe. He wasn't really sure how the whole thing worked out.

"Get off of her, now," Leon ordered.

Behind him Sherry let out one of her little whining sobs, "Leon, Jake stop it! What was she talking about?"

Jake remained where he was, weighing his options. If push came to shove would Sherry help him or had he just screwed himself over by trying to prevent her from getting shot?

She would have survived getting shot.

Helena, apparently that was the woman's name, continued to struggle against him.

Leon ignored Sherry's frantic plea, all his attention on Jake, "Let her go."

It would have been the prefect opportunity for her to do something, but she remained where she was, shifting her weight anxiously and wringing her hands.

"Put the gun down and I will." Jake felt that his offer was more than generous considering what had already happened. And maybe then they'd actually be able to get some answers.

"Don't do it," Helena cried out, "That thing -"

"Sherry," Jake snapped, "She's Sherry."

Leon turned around and looked at Sherry, which at least proved that they knew each other from somewhere.

"Why did she say Derek..." Sherry trailed off, looking absolutely forlorn.

"You don't know?" Leon sounded skeptical, "What happened at Tall Oaks?"

Sherry shook her head, "No! I told you, we were captured! I don't even know what's going on here."

"Alright," Leon sighed and, in easily the most shocking move of the night, lowered his gun, "Let's get you caught up on what's going on."

"Okay," Jake stood up and pulled Helena to her feet in the process, blocking her arm and shoving her away when she took a swing at him, "It's your turn to explain."

Helena glared daggers at him, "Simmons kidnapped my sister, forced me to cooperate with him or else he'd kill her. By the time we got to her he'd already infected her with the C-virus, all as part of his plan to assassinate the president."

Looking past her, Jake stared at Leon, hoping for a more elaborate answer or at least one that made more sense because Helena's answer had been the most half-assed collection of unconnected nonsense he'd heard.

Sherry shook her head, "That's -"

"Sherry, I'm sorry," Leon cut her off and then turned to Helena, "Simmons took her in after Claire and I got her of Raccoon City, he's the closest thing to family she has and..."

He looked back at Sherry. If nothing else Jake had to give him credit, being able to look a B.O.W. in the eye in a situation like that, albeit a B.O.W. that seemed on the verge of tears, wasn't something most people could do.

"It figures that he'd keep something like that," Helena said with a bitter smile, "But why did you give it to him instead of-"

"Shut the hell up!" Jake shouted. What he really wanted to do was slap Helena across the face, but as satisfying as it would feel, it would only make things worse, "Are you even listening? She was a little girl back then! She's not a thing, her name is Sherry and she's not dangerous!"

He was crazy. That had to be it. Nothing else could explain what he'd just said.

"Stop it! Everyone just stop it!" Sherry yelled, "I don't believe you! Derek wouldn't do anything like that, he wouldn't. I'm going to meet up with him and then...Then we can get to the bottom of this."

"No," Helena started walking in the direction which Jake had thrown her gun, only to stop when Leon shook his head. Scowling she went back to glaring at Jake, "You're not getting away to warn him about us."

"You can come with us," Sherry said frantically, "Or, no, let me call him and ask what's going on."

"No!"

Jake, Leon, and Helena shouted as one.

He felt horrible for siding with them in this particular argument, but he was more than a bit cynical and anyone who would adopt a B.O.W., even one that looked human at the time, was deserving of suspicion. And if Sherry had still been human when he got his hands on her, that meant that he'd allowed human experimentation on an orphan girl. It lined up unpleasantly well with what Helena had said about her sister and the C-virus. Then there was the mystery of why Simmons was in China in the first place. Jake had managed to parse that he was some sort of government official and it was odd that he'd be so conveniently close given the situation.

And, since he was being cynical, he might as well admit to himself that he was glad that it was Simmons who was possibly behind the whole mess. If it had been Wesker...

"Why not?" Sherry looked exasperated, "That could clear everything up! He could explain why he's here and he probably has an idea about who's really responsible for all this."

"And if it doesn't we're right back where we started," Jake explained before Helena could say something to make things worse, "It'll be best if you ask him in person. Besides, they're not going to try anything once we get there."

"Really?" Helena fixed him with an icy stare, "Why not?"

He nodded in Sherry's direction.

Helena looked her up and down, possibly weighing the odds of how a fight against her would go.

It was petty, but Jake was glad to have gotten one up on her.

"He's right," Leon said quietly, "She's...if Sherry...When I first saw her I thought she was something I'd fought before, back in Raccoon City. The G-virus, that's what she's infected with, is worse than the T-virus in a lot of ways. The thing in Raccoon City kept coming after us and all we could do was drive it back. Any damage we managed to do to it healed and it came back bigger and nastier each time."

"My dad," Sherry whispered, "He was after me. Don't worry Leon, I'm not upset, not anymore. You and Claire were protecting me and in the end there wasn't anything left of him. Otherwise he wouldn't have…"

Somehow it made sense that her whole family had been part of some fucked up experiment run by Umbrella. No wonder being captured by them a second time had upset her so much. They'd probably picked up where they'd left off and left her feeling like a helpless little kid again.

"Right," Jake spoke out when no one else said anything to change the subject, "We'll go together and one way or another everything'll get straightened out."

Because if it turned out that Simmons was innocent dealing with Leon and Helena would be that much easier. Sherry would probably actually be willing to do something in that situation.

And if they were right there'd be more of them to deal with what was sure to follow.

Helena gave Leon a look, "I don't trust them."

She was smart, Jake had to give her that much, but it was something he'd appreciate more if the situation was anything other than what it was.

"We don't have a choice," Leon replied flatly, "Besides, there's safety in numbers. Let's head to the river. It should be the quickest way through this area."

"And straightening all this out," Sherry added, good cheer restored by the prospect of working with Leon.

Sherry ended up leading the way, and though Jake would have rather brought up the rear on account of not trusting Leon and Helena and, unlike Sherry, not being able to see behind himself without turning around, he stayed next to her. Leon wasn't an idiot, and from what he'd said, knew better than to try and shoot Sherry, he'd probably be able to keep the woman from doing anything stupid.

Their situation was far from ideal, but it was a lot better than walking into what was starting to feel like a trap alone.

It was too easy. Nothing should ever be that easy unless someone was setting up. The problem was, he couldn't figure out the reason for the setup. If he could he would have felt a lot better about the whole situation. Asking Leon was an option, but he had the feeling that whatever answer he'd give wouldn't help. Assuming any of what Helena had said was true, Simmons clearly had a plan. Maybe he was covering something up for the Americans, maybe he was just trying to cover his own involvement in something, but if that were the case he wouldn't have been there. You didn't stand around in the middle of a mess that you were trying to hide that you'd had a hand in creating. A big piece of the puzzle was missing and he was certain that none of them knew what it was, wouldn't know until it was too late.

There were fewer zombies in this part of the city which made it somewhat easier to make progress. At least it looked like they were going to have an easy time getting to the trap they were walking into.

Storefronts and businesses gave way to warehouses and the roads cleared out. Before long they were walking past rows of shipping containers and cranes. Any minute now they'd make it there and even if they were stuck walking alongside the river, it would be a hell of a lot faster than going through the city proper.

It looked like things were finally going to get easier for them. All the more reason to be concerned.

There was a fire blazing somewhere nearby, but that wasn't usual form what they'd encountered so far in the city. What was unique was the debris scattered everywhere. For the life of him Jake couldn't figure out where they'd come from. Earlier, when they'd been working their way towards the highway there'd been that explosion and the direction lined up. Whatever had happened had left shipping containers strewn in all directions like they'd been picked up and thrown. It didn't look like a bomb had gone off and there wasn't anything in the area that he could see that could have caused the sort of destruction he was looking at.

His thoughts turned to the giant B.O.W.s they'd encountered in Edonia.

"What the hell happened here?" he wondered out loud, not sure if he expected, or even wanted, an answer. Mostly he was trying to make conversation to take his mind off of what he hoped were groundless suspicions.

Behind him Leon laughed, "Plane crash. We had a rough trip here."

Jake turned to stare at him. He wasn't sure if the man was joking or not, but now that he looked more closely at the bits of metal strewn across the ground damnit if they didn't look like the aluminum skin of an airplane.

Caught up in looking at the wreckage, he failed to realize that Sherry had stopped until he walked right into her.

She didn't even turn around, the eye in her back stared at him, wide and unblinking.

"Jake," she pointed upwards with one of her main hands, "It's..."

He looked around her and traced the path of her shaking claw to the top of a stack of shipping containers.

"Shit."

Standing next to a piece of twisted metal lodged in the top of the container was Ustanak. The B.O.W. looked down at them, making a wet choking sound that might have been a laugh, then it waved at Sherry.

"No," she whispered, shaking her head, the eyes there closed, the ones on her shoulders wide and horrified.

"Friend of yours?" Leon said with a smirk.

Jake rolled his eyes, "More like an ex-girlfriend -"

"So you've got kind of a thing for..." Leon interrupted then let the implication hang.

He'd set himself up for that one, hadn't he? And the worst part was that it was dangerously close to the truth. What Sherry was, how she looked, didn't repulse him the way it should have and it wasn't just a matter of having seen her when she still looked human.

"Do you know that one too?" Helena ignored their banter, cutting straight to the point.

Ustanak continued to look down at them from its vantage point, single good eye narrowed. During their previous encounters with it he'd gotten the impression that its eyesight wasn't all that good. Maybe if they were careful they might be able to sneak past it unnoticed. As the largest and most identifiable target she'd have the hardest time escaping its notice, but it might still be doable.

"Do you?" she demanded, causing Sherry to whimper.

"Yeah," Jake scowled, "You can shoot him if you want to though."

Helena's response was immediate, and Ustanak's wasn't that much slower. Slime sprayed through the air as bullets hit it, but it shrugged them off, grabbed the piece of metal next to it and threw it down at the four of them.

Screaming, Sherry leapt out of the way. Jake followed suit, managing a slightly more coordinated dive, rolled and got back to his feet. Helena and Leon did the same, heading for cover.

Looking over to Sherry, who was crouched on all fours, hunkered down by an overturned shipping container, Jake motioned for her to remain where she was while he backed away toward the pair of American agents. If they could coordinate some sort of plan they'd have a chance. He hoped.

Not even trying to figure out who had shot it, Ustanak let out a roar and jumped down, landing several meters from Sherry.

In response Sherry screamed and scrabbled frantically backwards. Despite everything, it seemed that she was still thinking of herself as a little girl instead of a B.O.W., which in any other circumstance, would have been funny in an endearing sort of way. Right now it was only frustrating since it meant he'd have to protect her until she came to her senses.

Leon, or maybe Helena opened fire on it, shots that impacted flesh proving as ineffective as those that ricocheted off the metal claw that was its right arm.

Jake joined Leon and Helena in shooting the thing, finally managing to draw its attention away from Sherry.

So much for a plan.

Ustanak bellowed and charged them, forcing them to scatter. Its momentum carried it into a shipping container, which it hit with enough force to dent the crate knock it backwards a rather impressive distance.

"Well, we've got its attention," Leon commented as he paused to reload, "So what now?"

It was an excellent question, one that Jake didn't have an answer for.

Sherry was still cowering off to the side, so the chances of her pulling it together and fighting Ustanak hand to hand didn't seem likely, even though she probably had the advantage with her claws and greater reach. Maybe one of the shipping crates had something useful in it, but there wasn't time to search.

"Shoot it 'till it stops moving," Jake said, "And then once it stops shoot it a few more times to be sure."

"Good plan," Leon smiled grimly, "More or less the usual way to deal with things like these."

The usual way? He already knew that Leon had fought B.O.W.s before, he'd said as much and Sherry confirmed it, but to even make a joke like that...

Jake ducked behind a pile of debris, letting Leon and Helena draw Ustanak's attention so that he could safely get over to Sherry. She was still crouched on all fours, watching the fight, which at the moment consisted of Leon and Helena shooting until Ustanak got too close to them and then running until they could find cover to reload. At least they were doing a good job of keeping it distracted.

"Hey super girl," he held out his hand to her.

She looked up at him, showing her fangs in an embarrassed smile before she pushed herself awkwardly to her feet before offering an unasked for explanation, "He'd stand outside my cell, looking in, watching me. As soon as they started running tests they knew about me, about the G-virus, and someone must have let him know because he'd talk to me about it. About horrible things. He wanted to be...what he is now. He wanted to be a B.O.W. and when I...when the G-virus started to... He'd talk about how I was becoming something beautiful. Jake, how could anyone..."

Whatever her question was, he had the feeling there was no right answer to it, at least not one she'd want to hear him answer. While he couldn't understand when the hell anyone would willingly allow themselves to be turned into a monster, there were plenty of stories out there. Finding her attractive though, that was an entirely different matter. It made sense that a B.O.W. would be interested in other B.O.W.s, especially one like Sherry for a very simple reason

She was beautiful.

Or something. Jake still couldn't figure it out, but somehow knowing that she was a woman made a difference.

And if he said as much to her he'd end up in the same category as Ustanak, he could see it in her eyes.

"Don't worry about it," he glanced back to where the fight with Ustanak was still ongoing. Leon was doing a good job of keeping the B.O.W.'s attention, but Helena seemed to have run out of ammo, "Let's just get out of here while we can."

Sherry looked past him to where Ustanak had charged Leon, forcing him to run.

"No, we can't leave Leon," she grimaced, flexing her claws, "And what you said earlier, I...I probably can fight him now."

Wonderful, she had been listening and taken it to heart. He'd meant it to comfort her when the B.O.W. obviously wasn't around, not as a suggestion that she fight it the next time they encountered it. Then again, if she managed to deal with it once and for all it would make things a lot easier.

"You really want to do this?"

"We can't leave Leon," she crossed her secondary arms over her chest as best as she was able in an almost comical gesture of stubbornness.

He could have argued that, especially since Leon's stated goal was to kill the man she wanted to meet and he was about to say as much when the eyes on the shoulders of Sherry's main arms went wide.

Yelping, she shoved him away, just in time for him to avoid being trampled by Ustanak. Instead she ended up taking the full force of the B.O.W.'s charge.

It wasn't that hard a push, but Sherry was a lot stronger than she'd been before and she'd used her main arms. By the time Jake had gotten to his feet Ustanak was standing over Sherry, metal claw raised. Its back was to him and Jake noted the cage strapped there. If their earlier encounters with the B.O.W. were anything to go by then its purpose was obvious, it had come to capture him, which meant that he was the one it was after. If he was lucky he was still valuable enough that it would try and take him alive, because the cage had given him an idea, one where he was going to have to use himself as bait.

Ustanak swung its claw, catching Sherry's left main arm when she raised her hands to block. Laughing, it pulled her to her feet and growled something at her.

Sherry bared her teeth at it and swung with her free hand, claws catching it across the face. Roaring more in surprise than pain it tightened its grip on her arm, blood welling up as the sharpened metal sliced through her flesh.

Twisting in its grip she struggled to pull free, further injuring herself in the process.

"Let go of her!" Jake had to shout to be heard over the noise of Sherry's screams, and even then the B.O.W. didn't actually turn to look at him until he started to approach it. Shooting it might have worked better, but he didn't want it pissed off enough to decide that taking him alive wasn't worth it.

It stared, slack features twitching into a grin as it recognized him.

Roaring it tossed Sherry aside and lowered its head in preparation to charge.

He probably should have thought things through a bit better.

Outrunning the thing wasn't possible, at least not for any distance. Hiding then, but where?

Just past Leon and Helena some bit of wreckage was still smoldering, throwing a ton of smoke up into the air. Behind it the stacked shipping containers were like a maze.

Perfect.

If he could keep it after him without it actually catching him that would give Sherry a chance to try and get behind it and do some actual damage, maybe take off its other arm.

Running as fast as he could, he led Ustanak towards the American agents.

"I've got a plan," he shouted as he rushed past them, "Run!"

Leon looked at him, looked at the charging B.O.W. and nodded, "It's after you, isn't it?"

"What gave you that idea?" Jake somehow found the breath to snap back at Leon.

The American agent ignored his comment, "So we lose it in the smoke, then what?"

A very good question, one that he hoped to figure out a better answer to that 'let Sherry deal with it and hope for the best'.

For once luck was with him, Ustanak followed them through the smoke and, blinded by it, missed the turn the three of them took and continued running straight when it crashed into a precariously balanced stack of cargo containers.

Before it was able to recover, the pile toppled over, down onto it.

The crash shook the ground and left his ears ringing.

Had it really been that easy? Jake waited, listening, but other than whatever had been the container settling, there was no sound.

Past the smoke something large was shuffling towards them.

Helena took aim, ready for whatever new threat was approaching.

"Easy," Leon warned.

"Did you kill?" Sherry asked in a small voice as she emerged from the smoke, holding her left arm close to her chest, secondary arms wrapped around it.

Helena didn't lower her weapon, "Yes."

Metal groaned as one of the crates shifted.

"Maybe," Jake amended, moving towards her to check if she was injured. Hesitantly, Sherry held out her arm to him.

"They never die that easy," Leon agreed, "The question is, do we stick around to find out or leave and hope for the best?"

Though she was favoring arm, there was no sign of injury other than the rapidly drying blood. She was able to move her claws just fine, so even if something had been damaged it had healed perfectly.

"You really think it lived through that?" Helena sounded incredulous and Jake didn't blame her. Knowing what a B.O.W. was capable of was one thing, actually seeing them in action was completely different.

"They usually do," Leon said simply as he continued to watch the crates.

Sure enough the side of one of the bottommost crates deformed further as metal claws tore through it. Thin metal peeled away as Ustanak pushed out of the crate.

Thick brownish-green slime oozed sluggishly from countless injuries, marking it as a C-virus mutant. Interesting, Jake had assumed that it was a Tyrant with its enormous size and missing arm, considering how the J'avo recovered from injuries like that.

Its prosthetic arm was twisted and remained lodged in the side of the crate, pulling away from the B.O.W. as it continued forward. Fresh slime sprayed from the new injury, the slime already coating it crackling as it started to harden. It turned to look at the mangled remains of the useless limb, its remaining arm pressing against its chest as it fumbled to unfasten the crumpled remains of the cage on its back, now serving no other purpose than to hinder its movements. Its efforts grew increasingly clumsy, the slime eventually adhering its arm to its chest as it all hardened into a chrysalis

"It's dead now, right?" Helena asked hopefully.

"No," Jake scowled, still holding onto Sherry's hand, "C-virus, it'll break out of that good as new and nastier than ever."

"It won't," Sherry pulled away from him and, lifting both her main arms above her head meshing her claws together as best as she was able, she slammed them down on the chrysalis.

It cracked with a sound like glass breaking, a jagged line opening down the center of its back.

Slime, far thinner than the resin that had formed the shell, poured from the crack as sticky, half formed limbs pushed out and flailed at empty air. Letting out a small noise of disgust, Sherry swiped at them with her claws, severing them easily. There was another gush of slime that soon slowed to a trickle.

Sherry gave the chrysalis a cautious prod with one of her claws. It punched through the shell easily, crumpling it.

"Now it's dead," she smiled at Leon, gave the husk one last poke and then bent down to scrape her claws clean against the ground.

If Leon was at all taken aback by having a B.O.W. baring its fangs at him he hid it well, understanding her expression and actually managing to smile back at her, "Good job."

As little as Jake wanted to give him credit for it, Leon was handling the situation remarkably well.

That simple praise seemed to do more for her than all of Jake's reassurances because when she stood back up she was still smiling, "Now we head to the river. If we can travel down it it should bring us right to where we want to go."

She made it sound so easy that Jake couldn't help doubting that things would go so smoothly for them.

Ustanak was dead so they shouldn't have anything to worry about, or at least anything they knew about.

Umbrella had experimented on Sherry, had made her.

Would six months have been enough for them to make more?


	5. The Truth Hurts

**Notes:** Sorry I took so long getting this one up. Life and other writing projects got in my way.

o0o

Jake was pleasantly surprised when they managed to make it to the river with further problems, though the river being less than five minutes from where they'd been might have had something to do with it. There was only so much that could happen in such a short time period and the worst things they'd encountered were a few zombies, which Sherry hung back to let Leon and Helena deal with.

During the short walk there Sherry had talked excitedly to Leon about people Jake had never met and various things that might have meant something to the two of them, but were meaningless to him. Several times during the short trip Helena looked pointedly at Jake, as though she wanted to say something, but she never actually made an attempt to start conversation, leaving him to wonder what her problem was. He got that she wasn't too fond of Sherry, but there was something else to it, something in her expression that he just couldn't read. Anger maybe, or regret? Helena was a lot better at hiding what she was thinking than Sherry, who was an open book despite her face being largely expressionless thanks to the changes the virus had caused. It was Sherry's eyes, Jake decided, all of them.

All Jake knew for certain was that Helena was thinking something over and he didn't like it.

Their arrival at the river brought with it a new set of challenges. While it was nowhere near as bad as the roads, that wasn't really saying much. Abandoned boats drifted aimlessly, mingling with trash and other, far less pleasant things, bobbing in the water. Turning back and trying to find another way would only waste time and any distance they could travel along the river would be progress.

"There's a barge over there," Helena gestured at a rickety looking craft, "Unless you want to look for something better."

Jake went over to examine it. The thing looked like it was held together by luck and rope, little more than a glorified raft with old tires tied to the sides so it wouldn't be damaged when it bumped against the dock, but it was floating high in the water and, more importantly, the keys were dangling from a string tied to the wheel.

"It'll do," he said, stepping onto it and discovering that it was surprisingly steady, "We're not going to be on it for long, just what? A mile or so?"

"If that," Sherry said happily, following him onboard, "He said he'd be waiting for us at the Kwun Lung Building."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Leon got on next and then paused to help Helena onto the boat.

Sherry shrugged and giggled nervously, "I'm really sure. I lost the phone I was using. All I know is that it's a big warehouse near the mouth of the river."

"That's..." Jake looked around at all the warehouses lining the sides of the river, "Better than nothing, I guess."

Meeting an important government agent in a warehouse in China. Again, it didn't feel right. There had to be some place safer, easier to secure, somewhere. Nothing about the situation did anything to ease his suspicious.

"It is," Helena walked over next to him, "I've still got my phone on me. I wasn't going to use it in case someone's tracking me with it, but if we're going to end up in the middle of things anyway we might as well find our way there fast."

By the time Jake got the engine running Helena had pulled up a map to their destination.

"Alright, here we go," Jake said, carefully easing the barge away from the dock, "Sherry, Leon, you get up front, try and push anything too big out of our way."

The boat tilted slightly as the two of them moved forwards and Helena followed, still staring at Sherry.

"Not going to work," Jake sighed, barely managing to prevent the boat from bumping back into the dock, "Helena, get to the back to try and balance things out."

She did as told without comment, continuing to watch Sherry the whole while.

"She's harmless you know," Jake whispered when she walked past him.

Helena paused, fixing him with a look that made it clear that he'd said the exact wrong thing, before continuing on her way. At the back of the boat she sat down, angling herself so that she could continue to watch.

After several minutes of uneventful travel Sherry spoke up.

"You don't trust me, do you?" she sounded more resigned than upset, something Jake was willing to consider progress from earlier.

Helena tensed, "What? No. I'm..."

"You're watching me," Sherry said quietly. With some difficulty she bent one of her main arms to use a claw to gesture at the eye on her back, "I can see you you know."

Jake had no idea where things were going, all he knew was that he didn't like it. It was the sort of situation that lead up to a fight and because he didn't know the cause there wasn't anything he could do to diffuse it.

"Let me handle this," Leon moved as though he was about to put a hand on Sherry's arm, hesitated, thought better of it, and went to join Helena.

Jake had watched the way the eye on Sherry's back had rolled to look at Leon's hand and then moved to follow as he walked away. It blinked several times, and, thought it was hard for Jake to be sure, it looked like she was crying.

The engine made enough noise and the American agents were keeping quiet enough that it was hard to hear what they were talking about, or at least Leon was. As the conversation went on Helena began to raise her voice.

"I keep thinking about it, Deborah wasn't doing anything until that woman -"

"Ada didn't know who she was, couldn't know," Leon said quickly, "And she was helping. You would have been attacked if she hadn't acted when she did."

"What if I wasn't? What if Deborah wasn't going to do anything?" Helena snapped back, "And here they are saying that she's behind all this. What if she's working with Simmons? And that thing, why do you trust it?"

"Alright, we'll never know, but Ada acted on what she knew," now Leon was raising his voice as well, "She's done a lot of things, worked for a lot of people, but never anyone like Simmons. And Sherry, she's…different."

"How do you know?"

This was an interesting, if unhelpful turn of events.

"I know," Leon's confident reply might have been covering up doubt. It was hard to tell.

"And I know that Deborah wouldn't have hurt me."

Yes, the conversation was definitely going in an ominous direction, and as much as he would have liked to continue to listen in on it, the boat's engine was starting to make a strange high-pitched whine. Afraid of what would happen if it stalled he started to ease the boat toward shore to save them an extremely unpleasant swim if it gave out before they reached their destination.

At the front of the boat Sherry turned her head to look at something on shore.

"What do you see?" Jake asked, looking in the same direction, curious as to what was so interesting that it needed that many eyes watching it.

"Get to the other side of the river, now!" Sherry shouted, frantically turning to face him.

Reflexively Jake turned the wheel as hard as he could, causing Leon and Helena to stumble.

"Are you crazy?" Leon glared at Jake, "What's going on?"

Jake still couldn't see what Sherry was looking at, but he could hear the noise getting louder. It wasn't the engine.

"It's a B.O.W.," Sherry turned to give him a nervous smile, "One of the things I let out at the lab. I don't know what it is exactly, just that they're really nasty."

'Really nasty' coming from something that looked like Sherry had enough of an impact that Helena swallowed whatever comment she was about to make and instead stared at the riverbank.

There was a dock with a whole swarm of zombies on it. They were aware enough at least to not walk off the end, but occasionally one would fall in, pushed by the others behind it. Just ordinary zombies thought, no sign of the source of the noise or what had Sherry so anxious.

"I don't see anything," Helena said angrily, "But ease up on the throttle some. You'll burn out the engine if you keep that up. Listen to the noise it's making."

"It's not the engine," and to prove it he killed the engine and let the boat drift the rest of the way to the other side of the river. His hope had been that, no longer drawn by the sound, whatever it was would wander off in another direction and leave them alone, but the whine continued to grow in volume.

"What is it?" Helena demanded, as though he knew the answer.

Instead he turned to Sherry, hoping that she could offer more of an explanation.

There was no need, something charged down the dock, screeching like a cat in heat as it flailed wildly at the crowd of zombies. It was unreal the way the spindly looking thing moved, shredding the zombies with a massively oversized limb that looked, and apparently functioned, like an organic chainsaw.

Finishing the zombies in a matter of seconds it continued to screech and flail at empty air before growing still. It stomped its feet on the dock, splintering the wood before it hopped onto a half sunk boat just past the end of it.

It never stopped screeching, the sound loud enough to drown out the noise of its saw-like limb. For a moment it looked like it would fall into the water, but somehow it managed to keep its balance and hop to another boat, this one still afloat, caught up on another boat that was moored near the side of the river.

The impact was enough to dislodge the boat and send it lazily drifting towards them.

"Shit!"

Swearing, Jake hurried to restart the engine and had better luck than he'd anticipated. As bad a shape as the boat looked to be in, its owner had at least taken good care of the engine and it came to life on his first attempt, causing the boat to jolt forwards several feet before he could throw it into reverse.

In an effort to help Leon and Helena started shooting the thing, which only served to further enrage it. The thing whirled frantically around as though it could cut the bullets out of the air, stomping several hurried circuits of the boat before it broke into a juddering run and leapt at them, chainsaw outstretched.

It landed next to Sherry, who, more by accident than design, reached out with her main limbs and managed to grab it just above the elbow of its saw-bladed arm. It was a lucky move, one that prevented the B.O.W. from being able to use that limb.

"What do I do?" she cried helplessly as the thing flailed and tried to twist free.

"Don't let go!" Jake and Leon shouted at the same time.

Sherry looked at them pleadingly as the thing clawed at her with its free limb.

"Kill it!" She cried out, trying to use her other set of arms to deflect its claws.

The problem was the way it was thrashing was rocking the boat and even if they'd been on solid ground the risk of hitting Sherry was too great. It was a stupid concern and Jake knew it, Sherry was a B.O.W. and a few rounds wouldn't do any real harm to her, but it was a chance he couldn't bring himself to take. B.O.W. or not she was Sherry and that made it different.

Except Helena didn't seem to agree with that line of thought. She took careful aim and managed to fire a single shot that went wide before the boat's rocking caused her to stumble.

"Don't you dare do that again," Jake shouted, again trying to steer the boat towards shore.

"Are you shooting at me?" Sherry squealed in fright, "You're shooting at me!"

She screamed again, in pain this time as the thing kicked her across the shin with a foot that was little more than a thin blade of bone and armor.

Eyes wide with fright, Sherry fell forward.

Letting go of the B.O.W., she pushed away from it in an attempt to keep herself from ending up in the water. The thing staggered back to the edge of the boat, claws scrabbling at the edge as it struggled to keep from falling overboard.

This time its wild movements worked against it and, overbalancing itself with the weight of its chainsaw arm, it fell backwards into the water.

At the last second it slammed its chainsaw down into the boat, the teeth finding purchase and beginning to chew through the rusted metal of the boat's deck.

Without thinking Sherry dropped down to her hands and knees to try and shove it away before it could sink them.

Instead she ended up bringing her hand down on the blade itself when the thing grabbed onto the side of the boat with its other arm and lifted the whirring blade. The teeth shredded through Sherry's flesh and quickly grew fouled in it. They ground to a stop against the bones of her arm.

"Sherry!" abandoning the wheel Jake rushed over to her, only to stop helplessly next to her. What the hell was there he could do in a fight between two B.O.W.s?

Roaring like a wild animal, Sherry tightened her grip on the blade and shoved the B.O.W. backwards, pushing the thing underwater. Her smaller, secondary hands grabbing tightly onto one of the tires tied to the boat's side, sharp claws slicing easily through the rubber as she tried to prevent the thing from pulling her into the water after it.

The thing struck her again and again with its free arm, razor sharp claws slicing open deep gashes on Sherry's arms.

Eyes wild with pain, Sherry stared at him, reaching out to him with her free arm, claws spread wide.

Froth dripped from between her clenched fangs as she continued to hold it under water, her howls of pain fading to harsh, desperate growls. In the state she was in there was nothing about her that looked remotely human or even sane, no trace of the little girl remained.

He took her hand in both of his and held on until the thing stopped moving.

Closing all of her eyes, Sherry let go of the side of the boat and grabbed the thing's arm with her secondary arms, pulling its blade free.

It sank beneath the filthy water and vanished from sight.

"Are you alright?" Only now that the danger was over did what he'd just done sink in, run up next to a B.O.W. in the middle of a fight and grab on to it.

"I'm okay," her voice was small, shaken, "It'll heal. They always heal."

And of course she was right. By the time he'd gotten a bottle of water out of his backpack to help clean her injuries all except the deepest cuts were already closed. He washed them, mostly for the sake of doing something as Leon took over steering the boat.

When he stood back up after her arm had finished healing, leaving no trace of the mangled flesh and bone deep lacerations that had been there moments before, he noticed something. During the fight she'd managed to tear some of the stitches down her back, the ones he'd assumed were holding shut a hole left by the removal of a second eye on her back. They were crusted over with dried blood and who knew what else and by the way her eye kept rolling to look towards it he could tell that it was, if not painful, extremely uncomfortable.

"Let me get that too," he gestured at her back. The way she recovered from stuff he figured that washing away the mess would help, at least until they ended up somewhere he could cut the stitches and see about properly tending to the injury.

"Sure," Sherry still sounded unsteady so she was probably glad for the chance to stay sitting down, "Whatever they did there is starting to itch really bad."

The muscles in her back twitched as he cleaned the mess there, the eye next to it half closed, but still watching his every move.

Without warning the eye went wide, "Oh!"

He stopped, afraid that he'd hurt her, "Should I keep going?"

"Give me a second," she wiggled her shoulders, "That's...I didn't even realize..."

Looking back down he looked into her eyes, plural.

She blinked up at him, the one eye still held half shut by the remaining stitches. Instead of being streaked with red and yellow, this eye was a dull blue and almost human looking if not for the shape of the pupil.

"Oh, shit," Jake swore softly, "We need to get those stitches out."

"Here," he hadn't even realized that Helena had come up behind him until she was there holding out a pair of nail clippers to him, "Long story, but I take a pair everywhere with me."

He took them and before long the last of the stitches were gone.

"That feels so much better," Sherry said, her impossible good cheer returning, "Being able to actually see..."

And like that it vanished because even the feeling of relief was another reminder of what she was.

"That must be it, the Kwun Lung Building," Leon spoke up over the sound of the engine, "I'm going to pull in and dock and then..."

He didn't finish.

There was no need to. One way or another everything was going to come together in the next few minutes and whatever the outcome it was going to be agony for Sherry. If things went in the direction they appeared to be going the man who raised her was a traitor or a terrorist or something, and if that wasn't the way things played out it meant that Leon, her friend, was the traitor.

As Sherry stood up Jake reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, "What you told me before, keep it in mind."

"What's that?" she sounded jittery, "What did I tell you?"

"That we're not, you know," he spoke softly, trying to ignore the way Leon was watching him, "Because if what they're saying about Simmons..."

"You don't know him," Sherry sounded more resigned than upset by the suggestion.

"I know," Jake agreed, "I don't, but it's going to be either him or Leon who's been lying to you and I don't think Leon -"

"I know," she cut him off, putting one of her main hands over his, razor sharp claws brushing carefully against his skin, "I just don't want to believe it, but if...If things go bad you need to run. You're too valuable to take any chances."

That had been his plan, except for one little detail, "Only if you follow me."

Sherry turned away from him. Positioning herself so that not a single eye was looking at him took effort, it was something that couldn't happen by accident.

"Come on," Helena stepped past them and onto the dock, "Let's go."

Sherry meekly followed, eyes on her back staring downwards, purposefully away from him.

Jake had already voiced his suspicions to Sherry so there was no reason to keep on her about it. She had to understand that the whole situation reeked of a setup there was no way she could be that naïve. He couldn't imagine the head of any organization meeting an agent there, especially not for anything involving a high value target, but Sherry was certain that Simmons would be there in person. They had to be walking into a trap, that was the only explanation he could think of. Simmons probably wouldn't even be there. Except he couldn't figure out the purpose of it all. Sherry was working for Simmons, she'd willingly go back to him, so there was no need for him to worry about that, and as far as Simmons knew, Jake was fully willing to cooperate, so that wouldn't be an issue either. It made him feel like he was being paranoid over nothing, but there was too much that lined up too well for him to take the situation at face value.

And on some level even Sherry seemed to be aware of it because she hung back, sticking close to him and letting Leon and Helena get farther and farther ahead of them.

"Jake," Sherry stopped, making eye contact with him for the first time since getting off the boat, with the eyes in her shoulders at least, she kept her head turned away from him, watching as Leon and Helena walked away, "I wasn't kidding about you running. You're too valuable."

"Don't worry," he lied with a smile, "You really think I'm going to stick around if things go south?"

His comment left her conflicted, he could tell. As much as she wanted him to run, she clearly wanted to believe that he was a better person than that, that he wouldn't just abandon her without a second thought. It was cute, how she thought the best of everybody, how even though she had to know otherwise, she wanted to think that Simmons would be in the warehouse and be able to make everything alright.

Looking past her he could see that Leon and Helena hadn't waited for them, if anything they'd picked up their pace to make sure they got there first. Jake could understand that line of thought, get in and get things taken care of before the B.O.W. arrived, or maybe Leon didn't want Sherry to see whatever was going to happen. The man was strange enough that Jake couldn't be sure.

"But if we want to get there before things heat up we'd best hurry. I don't think that your two friends are in the mood for talking," though since there hadn't been any gunfire yet Jake supposed that there still might be time. Hell, Sherry might have been right and the whole thing was just a big understanding and they were talking things out.

He doubted that Sherry was right.

Walking through the door the first thing Jake noticed was that Leon and Helena both had their guns aimed upwards. Following their path he could see that they were aiming at a thin, bearded man in a business suit who seemed completely at ease despite the situation. That he had a group of J'avo standing next to him was secondary to how utterly unsurprised he was. If he was Simmons he didn't match what Jake had expected an evil American bureaucrat to look like, the suit maybe, but otherwise he was too ordinary looking.

"Wait!"

Jake couldn't tell if Sherry's cry was directed towards the man or Leon and Helena.

The man smiled, far too confident for the situation, "Ah, Agent Birkin."

It was a trap. He had no clue what the reason behind it was, but he'd been right about it being a trap.

Even if Simmons had been expecting Sherry there was no reason that the state she was in wouldn't have at least given him pause and Jake had noticed how during her phone conversations with Simmons Sherry had neglected to mention her condition. He shouldn't even have recognized her, at least not immediately. From his perspective he should have been seeing a B.O.W. and a guy in an Umbrella uniform running in on him. So why wasn't he surprised, unless…

"They said you were involved in all this," Sherry stopped, noticing the J'avo for the first time, "Why?"

Everything was falling into place and it was so obvious that Jake could have kicked himself. He should have seen it from the start, all the way back in Edonia. The reason Simmons had been so quick to agree to his price was because he never intended to pay in the first place. How long had it taken for Ustanak to find them after she'd contacted Simmons with the news that she'd found him? And how else would the B.O.W. have consistently managed to track them so easily? It had been waiting for them at the river earlier because it knew the route they were taking. Of course Simmons wasn't surprised by the state Sherry was in, Umbrella was probably sending him regular updates on her condition, running tests that couldn't have been done back in the states.

"We've got to get out of here," he put a hand on Sherry's arm, "Now."

"No," Sherry shrugged him off, "I need to know!"

Simmons continued to smile while the J'avo behind him fidgeted, eagerly awaiting the inevitable fight, "It was for the benefit of the United States and global security."

"Can't see how killing the president is good for the country," Leon interrupted.

Nothing was so bad that it couldn't get worse. Jake just wished that Leon had mentioned that little detail earlier. If he had Jake might have thought to ask some more questions about the situation, ones that might have helped prevent things from ending up like this.

"The president's dead?" Sherry actually turned to look at Leon.

Worse and worse.

"Well," Simmons shifted his weight, resting his hands on the railing of the catwalk, "We have Leon to thank for that."

No wonder Leon hadn't mentioned it. A shame, because Jake would have loved to hear the story that lead up to that.

"Goddamn you Simmons!" Helena shouted, looking like she wanted to rush the catwalk, climb up and strangle Simmons.

"Dispose of them."

Simmons casually given order had the expected result, the J'avo immediately began firing indiscriminately.

So much for his being valuable.

Simmons scowled, "Hold your fire, those two are still of use to us."

Or not.

At least the J'avo listened to him and stopped shooting.

Leon looked at Sherry, "You think the antibodies story is real? Is that why he wants Jake?"

"I..." Sherry hunched down, trying to lift her secondary arms to cover her face, "If everything was a lie..."

"The antibodies are real," Jake interrupted, "I'm immune to the C-virus and who knows what else."

Leon was willing to accept that, probably because it was the easiest way to think that some good might come out of the whole mess, "Good. You and Sherry get out of here, lay low and get in touch with the BSAA. They're bound to show up for something like this and Sherry can probably call in some favors. I'll do what I can on my end of things to help out too."

Right, that made sense, Sherry had known the BSAA goons back in Edonia, been on a first name basis with their boss. It put the organization in a whole new light, that they'd be friendly with a B.O.W., but then again they were the Biological Security Assessment Agency. The right favors called in with the right people and he could see why they'd assess Sherry to not be a threat, her being so obviously harmless being the least of their reasons. It all came down to connections and, somehow, Sherry clearly had them.

"Works for me," Jake grabbed one of Sherry's main arms with both hands, "Let's go."

She hesitated, just for a second, and took off running with him.

Leon's plan was a good one, Jake wasn't necessarily going to go along with it, but it would work if he couldn't think of something better himself. It was the BSAA that worried him, and not because of Sherry. They might be willing to look the other way with her, but if Wesker really was his father...

There was no reason to assume they'd know, but they could. Simmons and the D.S.O. had, Umbrella had, so the BSAA might.

What would they do to him?

He wasn't anywhere near as bad as his old man, but some of the stuff he'd done could technically be war crimes, depending on how things had played out in Edonia in the last few months, which side had won. It wasn't much, he was just a contractor, a mercenary, but he was Wesker's son, in the middle of a biological incident. A convenient scapegoat and with Wesker dead there was no punishing him for what he'd done and a whole lot of people left who had unsettled grudges.

They might not even bother bringing him into custody depending on what branch of the organization they were from, what incidents they'd been there for.

Sherry would try to stop them, but she was a B.O.W. and accidents could, would happen no matter what her connections were. Especially if she belonged to Simmons and they knew what the man had done.

To keep her safe he'd have to find a way to convince her not to go to them.

On the bright side, at least he'd solved the problem of how to keep her. Maybe it wasn't optimism the same way she did it, but it worked. She'd have to stick with him to stay safe, he could convince her of that, he was sure. After all she'd been through, all the betrayal, he could be there for her.

Because he was a selfish, inconsiderate bastard to take advantage of a situation like that, but he'd be an idiot not to run with it.

Turning a corner they encountered a group of heavily mutated J'avo.

Sherry didn't even stop to fight them. She slashed at outstretched scything limbs with her claws as she ran, smacking them out of the way.

They were going to make it, there was door just ahead.

The one mostly human looking J'avo in the group was easy to miss. He wasn't carrying a gun or even a knife, just a syringe, something Jake didn't see until after the B.O.W. had jabbed it into Sherry's side.

Her momentum carried her the rest of the way to the door before she stumbled, tried to push herself to her feet with her main arms, failed and sprawled out on the floor. All six of her limbs scrabbled weakly at the floor as she struggled to drag herself back to him.

Umbrella had experimented on her long enough that they would have had to have found something that worked to sedate her, otherwise she would have escaped long ago. Jake just hoped that a sedative was all it was that she'd been injected with.

Drawing his gun he fired wildly at the mutants. It worked to make them back off, even if it did nothing else. Reaching Sherry he grabbed one of her main arms and tried to pull her to her feet.

"Come on super girl."

It was useless, she could hardly hold her eyes open.

"Go," she slurred, "Run."

"Fuck that!" he pulled her arm over his shoulder and lifted with all his might. She wasn't just bigger than him, she was dense, but he was desperate, actually managing to pull her up off the ground.

The J'avo weren't attacking for whatever reason.

They were going to make it!

The club-like limb of a J'avo slammed against the back of his head.

A flash of blinding white and then nothing


	6. Escaping Again

**Notes:** I had a lot of fun writing this one. Letting Jake's opinion color things in this chapter was a lot of fun and made it, along with the next, one of the most fun for me to write.

o0o

His head was pounding, everything ached, he was cold, and when he tried to roll over and go back to sleep he found he couldn't move. Of all the escapes he'd dreamed up during his time in captivity the most recent had to have been the most bizarre.

"Jake?"

He must have still been dreaming because Sherry certainly wouldn't have been in the same cell with him.

"Jake!"

Louder, more insistent this time, the shrill edge of panic creeping in.

The last of his mental fog clearing, Jake opened his eyes.

It hadn't been a dream.

He was restrained in a standing position, arms above his head and feet secured to the floor. The situation implied that either torture or experimentation was soon to come. With Umbrella both were equally likely and he had a feeling that after what he and Sherry had done Umbrella wasn't going to treat him as well during this second round of captivity.

The dimly lit room looked like it might have been a lab of some sort, with computers lining the wall he was facing.

"Jake, please, say something!"

"I'm awake," he muttered, craning his neck to see where she was.

The place was definitely a lab, definitely Umbrella because they'd been prepared for dealing with B.O.W.s. They'd put Sherry in a cage, one too small for her to stand up in so she was forced to lay curled up on the floor, the picture of misery.

"Are you okay?" she whimpered, pressing against the bars of the cage.

"Yeah," he wriggled against his restraints, "Let's go with that."

Her expression brightened slightly, "I was so worried about you. I thought they'd hurt you."

There was still plenty of time of that, but he didn't say as much. Instead he continued to look around the room. To the left there was a table, empty except for his backpack. To the right there was a door. Everything was dark metal, exposed pipes and conduits running along the walls and ceiling, a very different look from where they'd previously been held. So they were somewhere new then.

Would they be better or worse off if they weren't in China anymore?

"I'm sorry," Sherry spoke up, misinterpreting his silence, "I trusted Simmons. I should've been able to see through his lies."

She was right about that, but she'd had good reason not to want to. All things considered, he couldn't blame her. He'd been a stupid kid once too, never as naïve as her, but he'd done some stupid shit, trusted people he shouldn't have and paid for it.

"This is all my fault," she finished.

Again, she was right, depending on how much 'this' encompassed. Except he'd been complacent in it, getting greedy. Thinking that he could have his cake and eat it too, escape and get to keep the B.O.W. that he'd ended up getting attached to. No point in denying it, somehow he'd fallen for her and he'd fallen hard.

It fit he supposed, all things considered, proof that there was something fundamentally wrong with him.

The eyes on her shoulders were glistening with tears, a sharp contrast to the expressionless, feral mask that was her face.

"You were just following orders, right?" Because that was an excuse that worked. Taking a deep breath he tried again, "You thought you were doing the right thing. Find the vaccine, save the world and all that."

"When you say it like that," she sighed bitterly, shifting in place as she tried to find a more comfortable position.

Jake slumped against his restraints, "That's not what I meant. You were doing the right thing. And you thought that everyone else was trying to too."

"It's pretty bad, isn't it?" all eyes flicked away from him as she stared at the floor.

"Nah," he tried to sound confident, "I'll think of something. How sturdy is that cage you're in?"

"Leon didn't recognize me," Sherry continued to stare at nothing, "When you first found me you said it wasn't that bad."

Ah, that was what she was talking about, "How long was it since he last saw you? From the way he was talking it didn't seem like he'd stopped by to visit you all that often."

Her expression grew thoughtful, "Three years maybe, but still. And the woman he was with, Helena, she -"

"Had her own stuff going on," Jake cut her off, "None of it had anything to do with you."

"What am I supposed to do Jake?" she glanced up at him for a moment before looking away, "Once I bring you back what's going to happen to me?"

It was a hard question, any reassurance he gave her would only lead to more questions. For all he knew she wouldn't even want to stay with him.

"I don't know," he said at last, "What do you want me to say?"

"Just tell me the truth," the eye closest to him, one on her shoulder, stared at him with a pathetically mournful expression, "For once I want someone to tell me the truth."

The eye closed, tears running down her arm.

He stared, terrified that even when she was like this, crying and useless, he wanted to be there for her, to comfort her. Never before in his life had he felt this way about a woman and Sherry hardly counted as one. She was really just a girl, a naïve little kid, a B.O.W., a monster. So she was a lot of things really and it was all too complicated for him, especially when his head was still spinning from getting clubbed by a J'avo.

"You want the truth? Fine," he still hadn't figured out how much of the attraction was despite what she was and how much was because of it, "We'll get out of this, and when we do, I'll do everything I can to keep you safe. I can't promise anything more than that because I don't know what the hell is going on out there, but I'll give it my all."

She still didn't believe him, but she didn't have to. He'd prove it to her.

Hurried footsteps in the hall came at the perfect moment, preventing Sherry from trying to ask him how, because he honestly didn't know. Umbrella goons, J'avo, whatever they were, he was glad for it.

Sherry tensed, rolling over so that she was on all fours and then angling herself to grab the bars with her secondary arms.

"If they get close enough I can try and grab then and then," she stopped, looking up at him, afraid, "I'll get the keys from them. I hope they have the keys."

After all this the idea of having to kill a person still had her terrified. It was equal parts cute and annoying.

He didn't think that was going to be an issue though. The footsteps were fast and heavy, someone running.

Two someones running.

Fellow prisoners perhaps? As if they'd be that lucky.

They stomped to a halt outside the door.

"Maybe in here?"

A gruff male voice, vaguely familiar.

"Only one way to find out."

A second male voice, younger, an angry edge to it. Also familiar.

The door opened.

Jake stared at the pair that entered.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Jake groaned.

It was two of the same BSAA operatives from Edonia.

Behind him Sherry pressed herself harder against the bars of her cage, "Chris!"

The larger of the two men, Captain Chris, stared past Jake with a baffled look. It suited him.

Next to him the younger man, whose name Jake couldn't remember at all, caught sight of Sherry. Putting down the briefcase he'd been carrying, the man readied his rifle, "What the hell is that thing?"

Sherry flinched like she'd been hit, the fact that the guy had taken aim at her with his rifle likely not helping matters any.

"Don't you dare shoot her," Jake warned, struggling against his restraints.

"Her?" from the guy's expression Jake could tell that his already low opinion of him had dropped even further with that comment, "Is it your pet or something?"

"It's me!" Sherry pleaded, pressing her face against the bars of the cage, as though getting a better look at her would help, "Sherry Birkin!"

Chris, still wearing the same bemused look, took a step closer.

"Captain!" the second BSAA operative made like he was about to grab him, stopping when Jake was unable to stifle a chuckle.

"You have no idea how glad I am to see you!" Sherry was crying again, with relief this time, or so Jake hoped, "You've got to let us out of here!"

"Don't do it Captain," the one with the rifle warned.

How dumb was he that he actually thought that would be a problem? Jake watched as Chris continued to approach the cage, kneeling down to get a better look at Sherry. Maybe the real question was how stupid was the Captain? Promotions weren't always based on intelligence or even commonsense after all. Jake had met some real winners who held rank, but none of them would have been dumb enough to take a caged B.O.W. at its word and let it out.

"You were back in Edonia," Chris said slowly, "Did this happen then?"

It was taking all his effort not to burst out laughing at the absurdity of the whole situation. Jake simply couldn't believe how it was all playing out, and by the look on his face the second BSAA operative felt the same way.

"Sir," he cleared his throat, "We don't have time for this. We've got to find Haos."

"We can help," Sherry offered with a smile, "Leon told us to team up with you."

Not exactly what Leon had said, but Jake wasn't about to correct her, especially when Chris nodded and his underling swore.

"He'd said you were here," Chris frowned, "And that you were in a bad way, but he didn't mention how bad."

At the same time the second operative lowered his rifle and walked over to Chris, "Don't, it's probably a trick."

And just when Jake had been thinking he was the smart one.

"Really?" Jake was unable to keep from laughing, "What is it that you think we're going to do?"

"Shut up," the operative whirled around, looking ready to hit him, "I'm not going to listen to some Umbrella lackey."

"Umbrella lackey?" Jake stared at him, wondering what the hell he was going on about, only to realize that once again his stolen gear was going to make a difficult situation worse.

"People like you disgust me," the operative spat, "Monsters, all of you, worse than the things you make, thinking that when the shit hits the fan you'll be safe because of who you work for. You didn't count on your bosses deciding to use you as another experiment, did you? Is that why you're here like this? They're going to make you like your pet?"

That was a lot for him to respond to and there was so much he could say to it, but he decided to address the most offensive part first, "Sherry isn't a pet, she's a friend."

"Really?" the BSAA operative looked at him like he was crazy and maybe he was, "It was a friend of yours?"

"She is," Jake corrected, whishing that he could get even a hand free so that he could punch the BSAA asshole right in his smug mouth.

"Was," his expression wasn't just one of disbelief or stupidly over the top confidence and conviction, or at least not entirely, there was a hint of pity, which was easily the most offensive part, "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. If that thing gets out it would kill you without hesitation no matter what it used to be."

So much for the hypocrisy of the BSAA. This one at least was a true believer. He'd met guys like that before, different places, different conflicts and he despised every single one of them. So far the streak continued.

"You don't know shit," Jake said flatly.

The operative stepped up, ready to get in his face, which was what Jake had been hoping for. A few inches more and he'd be able to head-butt the smug bastard. It wouldn't help their situation any, but it would feel good.

"You have no idea what I've been through, why I've dedicated my life to stopping people like you," the BSAA operative began. As it turned out Jake wasn't going to find out either, the guy's eyes went wide, his expression going from righteous rage to utter horror like someone had flipped a switch, "Captain! Don't!"

He shoved past Jake, that little unnecessary act of spite costing him precious seconds, meaning that he was too late.

Two shots rang out and pieces of the locking mechanism of Sherry's cage fell to the floor.

"Piers, give me a hand, it's still stuck," Captain Chris said, grabbing the bars and pulling while Sherry shifted position so that she could push with her main arms.

Jake smiled, Piers, at least he knew the jackass' name now, "Or you know, you could go ahead lecture me on all the shit I don't know. That'll be a real laugh I'm sure."

"You can't," Piers stammered, ignoring Jake, though it clearly pained him to do so, "That thing - It'll kill us for sure. Even if it's tame, it belongs to him and he'll have it kill us."

Sherry fixed him with the closest Jake had ever seen her come to a look of anger, "You're really rude, you know that? And insubordinate. You'll be lucky if you don't get in trouble when you get back, the way you're talking to Chris."

Getting lectured like that by a B.O.W. really took the wind out of his sails, Piers looked positively crestfallen and Jake was loving every second of it.

Between the two of them Chris and Sherry managed to get the door to the cage open. Piers didn't help, just stood there with his rifle aimed at Sherry while she kept an eye on him. Specifically the eye in the shoulder facing him.

Once the door was open Sherry crawled out and stretched. Closing all her eyes she let out a small sigh.

Jake smiled, after all Sherry had been through she was still adorable.

Chris and even Piers took a step back when she stood up and continued stretching.

Jake couldn't blame them for that, she'd been pretty cramped in the cage so they probably hadn't realized exactly how big she was. The way Piers was looking at her Jake could practically hear gears grinding as he realized that what he'd mistaken for a particularly large Hunter class B.O.W. was a lot closer to a Tyrant and that his gun probably wouldn't do as much as he'd thought it would. BSAA issue, it'd probably do a hell of a lot more damage than anything the J'avo they'd encountered had, but there was only so much you could do against a B.O.W. at close range before it got its claws on you. Of course, Sherry would never do anything like that, not that Piers knew it.

"Captain," it was a clear struggle for Piers to keep his voice even, to keep the scolding tone out of it. In that moment Jake knew exactly the kind of guy he was, a boot-licking sycophant to everyone who outranked him and quick to throw his weight around with anyone who didn't and didn't give him the respect he felt he deserved, "I don't think this is a good idea."

"Noted," Chris said flatly, obviously having second thoughts about what he'd just done.

Working under someone like Chris must have really rubbed Piers the wrong way and Jake realized that he and Sherry were going to be convenient targets for his frustration. No matter how the situation went they'd have to be extremely careful.

Happy to be free, Sherry ignored the conversation, finished her stretching and turned to Chris, "Now we need to get Jake out."

"No," Chris was adamant about that much at least.

Piers turned to him and smirked, "Don't worry, the cleanup team will find you and take you into custody."

"We have to," Sherry said calmly, a good thing since if she got upset things only could have gone wrong, "Jake's blood is the only way to make a C-virus vaccine. Besides, we can't just leave him here!"

She looked pleadingly at Chris.

The BSAA Captain was weighing his options, "What was he doing working for Umbrella?"

The gears were grinding again, Piers was thinking again as he stared at Jake, the first inklings of recognition beginning to show, "You were the one in Edonia."

"Took you long enough, and after saying that you knew me from somewhere," Jake blurted out, only to realize that reminding the two BSAA members that they'd thought he looked familiar wasn't the best thing to be doing, "I'm not working for Umbrella, the only reason I have the stupid uniform is because I stole it when we were escaping from one of their labs."

"How long were you held for?" Piers demanded, not willing to accept what to him likely sounded like a weak excuse, "And what were they doing with you?"

"Nearly half a year," Sherry said softly, "And they were using his blood to enhance the C-virus Ustanak...when he was outside my cell it was one of the things he'd talk about. He didn't know what it was for, but he had his theories and they were… they weren't pleasant."

It was a slight movement, but Jake noticed it, the way Piers' eyes went to a briefcase that he'd put down when they first entered the room. Somehow the BSAA had gotten a sample of either the virus or the vaccine.

"That must have been what they hit Simmons with," Piers commented, missing the way Sherry flinched at his words, "Depending on how much of it they made we might be in trouble."

The virus then. That was good, it made him more valuable, actually useful since there was a possibility that a vaccine didn't even exist yet. They'd have to take him with them then, unless they wanted to throw away the chance of being able to produce a vaccine.

"I don't think they made that much," Sherry offered, "He'd only started talking about it recently."

That was good, because from what he'd seen of the C-virus so far, there wasn't much room for improvement. The J'avo were pretty much perfect B.O.W.s and anyone infected became one. An improved version of that being mass produced and distributed would be the end of his career and all he'd be good for would be the vaccine and it would only be a matter of time before he was unnecessary for even that. What would happen then? He didn't know enough about the science and tech stuff to be sure, but he was sure it wouldn't be pleasant.

Both Chris and Piers visibly relaxed, which again got him wondering what the enhanced version of the C-virus did, but there was no good way to ask.

"But Derek...Simmons got infected with it?" Sherry asked for him, not willing to let the matter rest, "How bad was it?"

She was like a little kid poking a hornet's nest.

"Can we wait with the questions?" Jake interrupted before, "At least until we're out of here?"

"Oh," Sherry looked embarrassed, "Sorry."

She went over and began looking at his restraints, her expression immediately brightening.

"This isn't bad at all. It's a really simple release mechanism, it doesn't even need a key, which I guess makes sense. All I have to do is," she stopped to paw at the metal device holding his wrists with one of her main hands. Nothing happened, her claws lacked the dexterity to manipulate anything. Undeterred, she lifted her secondary arms, only to discover that they didn't have enough mobility to reach that high, "Okay, I'm going to need help."

Now she sounded desperate, frightened. It made him feel bad for her, even though he was the one that was still stuck.

She looked at the two BSAA operatives for help.

Piers took a step back.

Chris scowled and came forward.

When they'd first met Chris had commented that he looked familiar and he'd gotten the same sort of feeling even though he'd never had dealings with the BSAA until then. The European branch at least had no reason to work with outside contractors and no matter how good the offers the African branch of the organization were making he'd heard too many stories to go anywhere near that.

Thinking of the BSAA's African misadventures though...

No, it was way too much of a coincidence. Impossible for someone that famous, someone who was largely a figurehead or maybe an icon, to be sent out into a mess like this with only a single promotion seeking shitheel to accompany him.

Chris grabbed his wrist restraints, only to stop, "I know you."

It really was him, wasn't it?

Captain Chris was the famous Chris Redfield, survivor of Raccoon City, BSAA legend and the man who would forever be celebrated as a hero for killing Wesker and ending the greatest bioterror threat in history, for all the good that last part had done.

Chris' expression hardened, becoming dangerously blank, "When this is over we're going to talk."

Talk, yeah. That was a conversation Jake was going to do everything in his power to make sure never happened. Because he knew exactly how it would go, short, one-sided and he wasn't going to survive it.

"Sure," Jake said slowly, trying not to let how much he already knew show. If the BSAA Captain suspected anything he was likely to decide that vaccine or no, he wasn't going to leave a loose end like that dangling.

"About your father," he added unnecessarily as he unfastened the restraints.

"Yeah, sure," Jake bent down to work on the ones at his feet, "Like I want to hear about that deadbeat asshole. He ran out on my mom and me, abandoned us to do whatever the hell it was that he did. Fuck that. He's dead and that's what matters."

Even knowing the truth, he was surprised that the same old resentment was still there, unchanged. Knowing who his father had been, what he'd done made no difference at all. He and his mother had been abandoned, his father clearly not caring what happened to either of them. If they'd both died as a result of some mad scheme, well, his mother was already dead by the time the incident in Africa had taken place so action or inaction it didn't matter in the slightest. Hell, he didn't even know if his father had even known that he existed at all, not that it would have made any difference.

Unlocking the restraints around his feet Jake looked up and saw Chris was still staring at him, looking at him like he'd passed some sort of test.

That conversation still wasn't happening, even if he was curious what the BSAA Captain might have to say.

Ignoring the two BSAA operatives he went over the table where his backpack was.

Of course Umbrella had taken his weapons, leaving only the bottled water and the bottle of scotch. Shaking his head, he put the backpack on, figuring that he might need it for something later.

And besides, the scotch had made it this far, no sense in abandoning it now. Once this was all over and he and Sherry were safe, or the closest approximation thereof, he and she could have a drink to celebrate. All they had to do was escape the facility and ditch Chris and Piers.

It should be easy.

Should be.


	7. Decisions

**Notes:** Sorry this one took me a bit to get up. I've been distracted by RE7 (I've almost beat it!) and other writing projects. We're in the home stretch now though. Probably one more chapter after this one, unless I decide that this thing needs an epilogue or something, in which case it'll probably be two more chapters.

o0o

One good thing came from his being unarmed, it meant that he wasn't a threat so the BSAA operatives had less of a reason to shoot him. He didn't like that he was wandering around an Umbrella facility unarmed, but at least he didn't have to worry too much about being shot by his 'rescuers'.

They'd made Sherry take the lead, the justification being that whatever they encountered she'd be the most able to deal with it. Sherry was willing to accept that, though she clearly wasn't happy with it. Jake didn't want to start trouble and further upset Sherry by pointing out that the obvious reason was because they didn't want her behind them, even if the way Piers kept letting his rifle drift up so that it was aimed at the center of her back made it clear.

She knew though, the eyes on her back never left him.

Jake looked at Piers out of the corner of his eye and scowled. The BSAA operative was being a bit too obvious about his intent and the fact that the famous Captain Redfield hadn't said anything offended him on a personal level. Sherry kept trying to make conversation, talking about people that were mutual friends and he didn't even have the decency to tell his lackey to at least pretend that he wasn't ready to shoot her at a moment's notice.

Seeing no other option he decided to take matters into his own hands.

"Impressive gun you've got there," Jake said, trying his best to sound conversational, "Not standard issue, is it? Because I don't recognize the make."

Piers actually almost smiled, "No, it's not. Basic antimaterial rifle with a few modifications that make it more effective against armored and unarmored organic targets. Punching a clean hole through a Tyrant isn't going to do any good, no matter what you hit. They're made exclusively for the BSAA so you're not going to see them very often."

He couldn't argue with that, "So what's the range on that thing?"

"What they say or what I've seen from experience?" Piers asked, "Because I haven't had the chance to use it over that much of a distance."

"I don't know," Jake shrugged, "What counts as that much of a distance to you?"

"Anything over five hundred meters," Piers smiled with the false modesty of someone who was confident they were one of the best at what they did.

"A sniper in the BSAA?" Jake was genuinely surprised. He knew that the organization pulled in members from all over, but what use they had for a sniper was beyond him. B.O.W.s weren't exactly long range threats. He could appreciate the idea of taking them out from as far as possible, but having an actual sniper was overkill. Unless Piers wasn't there to deal with B.O.W.s. Maybe the BSAA was doing some of its 'assessing' long distance and dealing with the individuals who used or made B.O.W.s, which he was pretty sure was overstepping what they were supposed to be doing. Technicalities like that never stopped anyone though, so he could understand it, "You get much use from that?"

"Not really," Piers shrugged, "I'm the best marksman in the organization, for what it counts, but that's not saying much. I'm putting my skills to good use though, and that's what counts."

Ooh, he certainly was an arrogant asshole. In any other situation he was the kind of guy Jake would have loved to go out drinking with, with the intent being to get him good and drunk, start a fight and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.

"Worried that you're getting rusty?" Jake wondered, interested to see where the conversation would go. Piers was a real riot and Captain Redfield hadn't even bothered to tell him to shut up and pay attention which implied either incompetence on Redfield's part, or that for Piers this wasn't out of the ordinary.

"Not Piers," Chris spoke up in defense of the sniper, "He really is that good. The BSAA is lucky to have him."

Jake wasn't going to let that one slide, not when it was offered to him by the famous Chris Redfield, "The BSAA doesn't care too much about fucking trigger discipline then, does it?"

Sherry let out a small gasp and froze, eyes on her back wide.

Piers turned to face Jake, looking ready to smash him in the face with the butt of his rifle.

Jake crossed his arms over his arms over his chest, daring the sniper to try it.

Chris winced and put a hand on Piers' shoulder, "Take point, I'll keep an eye on them."

"Captain, I -"

Chris silenced him with a glance.

So one point in his favor then, he knew when to shut up and do what he was told even when he wasn't happy about it.

"You," Chris glared at Jake, "Keep your mouth shut, don't try to start anything."

Moving over so that she was next to him, Sherry put one of her main hands on Jake's shoulder and grabbed onto his arm with one of her secondary hands.

"It's fine," he said quietly to her, "They'll get us out of here and everything'll be okay. The D.S.O. gets its vaccine, I get paid and you'll be fine."

And she would be fine because part of his payment would be the promise that nothing bad happen to her, that she be allowed to come with him when it was over if she wanted to. More than anything he hoped that he could manage that.

"We have to find Haos first and stop it," Chris reminded.

"What is Haos exactly?" Sherry asked, tightening her grip on Jake's arm.

"Ada Wong's ultimate weapon," Chris said grimly, "A giant aquatic B.O.W. designed to attack coastal areas and spread the C-virus globally. We've got to stop it before it emerges. If it gets out it'll be too late, killing her will have been for nothing."

"We've got to help them Jake," Sherry pleaded, as though it was necessary.

He wasn't about to sit by and let the end of the world happen. With J'avo and zombies everywhere, a vaccine would be useless and so would he, a human in a world of B.O.W.s. Prying her hand from his arm he held it tightly, "No argument there," he turned to Chris, "You know where this thing is, right?"

"Somewhere in the center of this place," Piers cut it, "We keep following the pipes deeper in and we're bound to find it. This whole underwater lab is a giant incubator for the thing."

Sherry's eyes went wide, pupils narrowing in fear, "Underwater? We're underwater?"

"Don't think about it," Jake sighed. At least that explained the strange construction of the place, narrow corridors, minimalistic design and airlock style doors at regular intervals in the halls, "We find the thing, kill it and get out of here."

Overhead something rattled in one of the vents.

Sherry hunched down, looking fearfully up, "What was that?"

"Probably a Rasklapanje," Piers gave a wry laugh, "Or part of one at least. The place is crawling with them, literally, probably the reason we haven't seen anyone or anything so far. They attack anything that moves. If we see one it's best not to engage."

"Leave them to you, huh?" Jake raised an eyebrow, "Or are we saving ammo for dealing with Haos, because if that's the case..."

He looked to Sherry, not wanting to volunteer her, but if she was willing she could probably do a number on them.

"No," Chris shook his head, looking at Sherry's claws, "Fighting them's a waste of time. They don't move very fast and they tend to fall apart."

"Like on their own?" Jake wondered, was this the sign that his luck was turning? That the only things in the whole facility were an unfinished B.O.W. and a bunch of defective failures?

"Sometimes," Piers stopped to peer around a bend in the corridor, then motioned for them to follow "And then you have to worry about all the pieces coming at you from different directions. Doesn't matter though, I think we're here. It's clear."

Immediately after the bend the corridor opened up, ending at an enormous door.

There was a key pad next to the door. Piers pressed a few buttons and a moment later a series of green lights lit up alongside the door.

It made sense, Jake supposed, security wouldn't be too big of a deal in a place that was underwater and full of B.O.W.s. Ease of use and quick lockdowns would be far bigger concerns if something went wrong than keeping anyone out. Who would end up in there anyway?

Only the four of them.

Slowly the door slid upwards, opening to reveal a massive structure suspended from the ceiling far above. It was covered in wires and blinking, multi-colored lights, countless sensors monitoring the growth of the thing inside. High above lights flickered on, revealing that the structure was partially organic, having grown around and over the pipes and wires supporting it. With all the lights it looked like a cross between a chrysalis and an inverted Christmas tree. Judging by the colors of lights, a scattering of red, with the majority yellow, and an uncomfortable amount already green, they'd arrived just in time.

"How are we going to stop that?" Sherry looked up at the thing and then down at her claws, "We can't fight it, can we?"

"We won't have to," Chris said calmly, "We kill it before it's hatched."

That didn't answer the question of how though, at least not until Piers slung his rifle over his shoulder and went over to a lighted podium at the edge of the room closest to the thing.

"We just cut it off and it should die on its own," he pressed a button. Several lights turned red and an alarm began to buzz loudly, "Our work ends and this whole place becomes the problem of the cleanup crew they send in to clear it."

"I want to see it through to the end," Chris stepped forward, "We're not leaving until this thing is dead."

As far as Jake could tell that wouldn't be too long a wait. A series of tubes pulled away from the thing, black slime dripping from where they'd been attached. More of the lights changed, going from yellow to red and some of the red ones began flashing. Others remained green though, and it a troubling turn of events, not every yellow light that changed went red. About one in ten was shutting off entirely.

Or going green.

"It's moving," Sherry hissed, keeping her voice low as though she were afraid of waking the thing up.

"That's just the thing shifting as the supports disengage," Piers dismissed her concerns, "Once they finish retracting the thing should fall and crush itself under its own weight."

And they were standing less than ten meters from it, watching it happen, something Jake felt the need to comment on, "And how do you know it won't topple over on us?"

"The way it's positioned it should fall straight down," Chris' tone made it clear that he had faith in Piers' assessment of the situation, "Keep an eye on the doors and walls though, we don't need anything sneaking up on us."

"Mind giving me a gun so I can do more than watch if it comes to that?" Jake asked, figuring that it was worth a try.

Neither of the BSAA operatives bothered to respond.

"Why are some of the lights still green?" Sherry demanded anxiously, "What does that mean?"

"The Captain told you to watch the walls," Piers reminded as something fell from a vent and thudded down onto a platform somewhere above them. At the same time a tangle of tubes fell away from the chrysalis, catching on the railing on the far side of the room from them.

"I am," Sherry grumbled.

Piers turned around, "Then why does it look like you're looking at me?"

Wordlessly Sherry raised a hand to point at one of the eyes on her shoulders.

The BSAA operative went pale and turned back to the control panel.

Chris looked over his shoulder and pointed at something, "Should those numbers be changing?"

"I don't get that either," Piers sounded upset, "The tubing that just fell away was supplying oxygen to it. I'd think its heart would stop or something."

A new alarm started in, this one louder and more urgent sounding.

"There it is," Piers let out a relieved sigh, "It's spiking and then the thing should die."

Slime gushed from the holes left where tubes and pipes had been, forcing Chris and Piers to take a step back.

"So it's bleeding out? Good job."

No sooner did Chris finish speaking than a split appeared down the center of the chrysalis, something mottled gray and pink heaving beneath.

"I don't think so," Jake said quietly, "You might want to start shooting."

The split widened, the remaining lights on the thing flickered and then died as the chrysalis shuddered.

Chris opened fire and Piers stepped back to take aim.

Bits of the chrysalis flaked away under the assault, sprays of slime rising up with each bullet that hit.

There was a small explosion of gore when Piers shot directly into the still widening split, but none of it seemed to be doing anything as far as Jake could tell.

A boneless looking limb flopped out of the split, sliding down the wall and catching on a protrusion there.

The thing turned, pushing its head out, clinging to the crumbling chrysalis with is other arm and a tangle of gelatinous tentacles.

It turned to face them, its head little more than a skull covered by a thin layer of transparent flesh. Lidless white eyes locked on them and it let out a gurgling roar. Behind its ribcage Jake could see its organs twitching and pulsing. Piers shot it in the chest, the round aimed perfectly through the gap between its ribs and its flesh turned opaque from the damaged tissue.

The giant B.O.W. shuddered and fell from the remains of its chrysalis, landing somewhere far below with an impact that shook the room.

"We've got to run!" Sherry screamed, "Now!"

She turned and, forgetting how much larger and stronger she was, tried to grab Jake to hurry him along. Instead she nearly pushed him off his feet and had to stop to help keep him from falling to the ground.

"I'm sorry," she grimaced, "I'm -"

"Don't say it," he put a hand on her shoulder, watching at the eye there rolled to follow the movement, "Just stay calm, it was an accident. You're still getting used to things, but it'll get better."

He was proud of himself for managing a reassurance like that, at least until Sherry shook her head and spun him around.

"Look!"

The door that they'd come in through was already half shut.

"Shit!" Grabbing her hand Jake started running, only to stumble when Sherry stopped abruptly and pulled him back.

Something fell from above and landed in a heap in front of the door.

Twitching the thing rose to its feet, a roughly human shaped black husk that looked like it was made of layers and layers of rotten leather. It faced them, featureless except for a mouth that took up the entire lower half of its head, and began to stumble bonelessly forward.

"It doesn't look too bad," Jake said hopefully, "One good hit should take it out."

Sherry nodded and charged it, claws outstretched.

They punched effortlessly through the thing. With a flick of her wrist she tossed it against the wall. On impact its rotten hide split, one of its arms tearing free and landing several feet from the rest of it.

"That was easy," Sherry smiled, "Chris, Piers, hurry up!"

The room shook again.

With a noise halfway between a roar and a scream Haos pulled its way back up to the level they were on.

At the same time the severed arm of the B.O.W. that Sherry had dealt with started twitching, slithering its way towards them. Not long afterwards the rest of it started to get up.

"I think we found a Rasklapanje," Jake shouted to the BSAA operatives, "So what do we do about it?"

"Don't let the worms get you!" was Chris' cryptic response.

The Rasklapanje was between them and the door, that was fine though. Like Piers had said earlier, the thing was slow and not very coordinated. Dodging by it wouldn't be a problem, except Sherry had frozen to watch as Chris and Piers once again opened fire on Haos.

So much for wanting to run.

"Come on," Jake grabbed her hand, "We've got to hurry."

"No," Sherry pulled her hand away, "We can't leave them behind."

"What can we do to help?"

She looked at him, looked at her claws, and watched the fight all at once because she had enough eyes for that. It made him wonder if part of her problem was that she got overwhelmed by keeping track of everything that was going on around her, or if it was just that she genuinely thought that she could help everyone, save everyone.

In the end it didn't matter, the door finished closing, leaving them trapped between the Rasklapanje and Haos.

"We can deal with that thing at least," she gestured at the Rasklapanje with a claw.

"Sure," Jake shook his head, "I just hope there's another way out."

"The Rasklapanje had to come from somewhere," she said hopefully.

He couldn't argue with that. Letting Sherry deal with the main body of the thing, he went for its severed arm and promptly found out what Chris had meant by worms when he went to kick it.

The limb twitched and flopped, dodging his kick and grabbing onto his foot before coiling around his leg like a snake. It began to slither upwards. Grabbing it he discovered that its hide was slick with slime and tougher than it looked, but he was able to get his fingers around it and pull it off of him, at which point it promptly twisted in his grip so that the stump was facing him. Something moved inside and an enormous gray, maggot looking thing surged forward. Swearing Jake tossed the appendage as far away as he could.

Sherry was having slightly better luck with the main body, holding on to it with the claws of her main arms and using her secondary arms to grab onto whatever limb got too close to her, pulling it apart in the process.

"I think it's dead," her tone made it a question rather than a statement.

"Why would it ever be that easy?" Jake muttered, watching as one of the severed limbs managed to find the torso of the thing and leathery strips of hide began to knit the two together.

The BSAA operatives weren't having much better luck with Haos. Piers managed another shot, this one into the thing's eye.

Howling the giant B.O.W. fell backwards, grabbing onto the platform they were standing on in an attempt to keep from falling. Metal screamed under the strain as the B.O.W.'s immense weight began to tear it free from the wall.

"We need to go up," Chris shouted, running towards the far side of the platform to where a section of pipe had fallen across it when it had come free from Haos' chrysalis, "There should be a door up there and the thing's trapped in here."

The platform began to tilt dangerously, slanting towards the pit at the center of the room. Chris made it the pipe first, followed by Piers, who he stopped to help up, before climbing it up to another platform.

"They're not waiting for us!" Sherry actually turned to look at him.

"Did you really expect them to?" despite the situation it was a struggle not to laugh at how surprised she sounded.

The one good thing about the situation was that, thanks to the BSAA operatives continued shooting at it, Haos was focused entirely on them.

By the time they reached the pipe the platform they were on had fallen several more feet.

Taking a running leap Jake jumped for it, managed to find a handhold and start climbing up.

"Grab onto -" he started as the platform fell away, only to see Sherry climb past him, using her claws to cling to the wall.

Getting to the next platform before him she reached down with her secondary arms to pull him up.

"See," he smiled at her, "It's not all bad. And if you look up I can see the door they were talking about. You think you can climb straight up to it?"

She looked up, "Probably, but what about you?"

"You're strong enough to lift me no problem," he continued to hold onto her hands, "It shouldn't be that hard to carry me up."

"Wouldn't it be easier if we just follow?" she tilted her head towards Chris and Piers, who were already a good ten meters above them, having already managed to jump across two other platforms and climb up a tangle of wires.

Haos took a swing at them, knocking one of the platforms off the wall.

"I think a shortcut might be safer," he replied.

"Alright," Sherry continued to look upwards, "It's kind of far though, I don't know if I can climb that far."

"At least try," he said as she tested his weight and figured out how to best hold onto him.

It wasn't easy for her, but in the end she managed to wrap her secondary arms around him and lift him. They were far stronger than they looked, something he already was aware of and, though he couldn't be sure, it seemed like their range of motion was increasing.

"You don't really weigh very much," she giggled, sinking her claws into the wall and beginning her climb.

"Yeah, let's go with that," Jake shook his head, wondering how the fact that she was considerably larger and stronger than she had been still hadn't managed to sink in for her. All her eyes and arms didn't get in the way or slow her down, so she had to be aware of them, but she still seemed convinced, on some level, that she was a little girl rather than whatever it was that she was now.

Looking around her Jake was able to watch as they passed Chris and Piers, who had made it about half way to where the door was. The platform they'd reached had a ladder on it, so they'd have an easy go of it, especially since Piers had managed to shoot out Haos' other eye. The B.O.W. was flailing blindly at the walls and anything it could reach.

Pressed against Sherry the way he was, he could feel the movements of her muscles shifting beneath her skin as she climbed the wall. The way her arms were jointed and how the different muscle groups worked was obviously inhuman. He just wished that he was in a situation where he could get a better look at it, the way she carried herself fascinated him. When she fought or otherwise physically exerted herself she moved like the B.O.W. she was, but any other time it was all small, deliberate motions, far more delicate than she had any business being.

Another Rasklapanje pushed its way out of a vent near them, tumbling free and falling on a partially collapsed platform below. The noise of its impact caught Haos' attention and it quickly grabbed the smaller B.O.W. and smashed it against the wall repeatedly. A pipe below them broke open, blasting Haos with steam.

The smell of its scalded flesh was appalling, somewhere between rotten fish and sour milk of all things.

Red lights flashed on along the walls, outlining a path to the door that they were heading to.

"Okay," Jake smiled, "Things are getting better for us. This place has actual emergency lighting. We follow it and it'll lead us straight out of here."

"That's good," Sherry panted, "We're almost there. A little further and oh no."

"What?" Jake looked up and saw a pair of Rasklapanje standing on the platform, reaching out towards them.

One of them leaned too far forwards and fell, the other grabbed onto Sherry's claws and held fast. Its jaw unhinged, a worm as thick around as man's arm slithering out of its gaping mouth.

"Oh that's horrible!" Sherry gasped and dragged her arm along the wall, trying to scrape it off.

One of its legs fell free, along with a good chunk of the black stuff covering its side, revealing a writhing mass of worms.

Sherry shook her arm, even as the worms began to crawl up it. Jake could feel her hold on him starting to loosen.

"Get up on the platform, once we're on solid ground we can get them off."

Whimpering, Sherry did as told, dropping him to immediately begin clawing at her arm.

Jake hurried to toss and kick any bits that fell away off the platform before they could attack or reassemble.

By the time Chris and Piers joined them they'd managed to deal with the Rasklapanje and Haos was still clawing at the walls below, trying to find them.

"So what's the plan?" Sherry looked expectantly at Chris.

The BSAA Captain looked down at the giant B.O.W. below them, "That thing should be trapped here. We have to get out of here and call in help. I don't like doing it, but there's nothing the two of us do. And if he," Chris pointed at Jake, "Can help make a vaccine we need to get him to safety. There's a service tunnel through the door here, we follow it to the next branch of the compound and then get to the emergency escape pods."

Unable to help himself Piers fired one last round at Haos. Jake didn't see where it hit, but he heard the B.O.W.'s roar and felt the walls shake as it began to climb.

"Was that really necessary?" Jake snapped.

"It was worth a try," Piers shrugged and began to reload.

"Please don't fight," Sherry begged, helping Chris open the door.

The tunnel was a tight fit, ringed with airlock style doors every ten meters, the only light the dim red glow of the emergency lights above each door.

Sherry slammed the door behind them, not that it was necessary. The corridor was far too small for Haos to fit after them.

"We made it!" she showed her teeth in what Jake recognized as a smile, one that promptly vanished when she saw the way Chris and Piers were looking at her.

"Let's just get out of here," Jake patted her on the shoulder, "We get to the surface and get everything figured out."

They'd made it just past the first set of doors when a massive impact shook the tunnel.

"It's trying to follow us," Piers said, looking back, "Not that we need to worry."

Another impact, Jake would have fallen over if not for Sherry catching him, Piers stumbled and Chris fell against the wall.

"Persistent son of a bitch," the BSAA Captain scowled, "But you're right."

There was a series of pops and a loud hiss, water began spraying from somewhere above and the door closest to them started closing.

A mad dash to the next door followed. Splashing through ankle deep water they made it through. Behind them the door closed, water thundering against it as the corridor filled. Something pounded against the roof of the. More water poured in, triggering a chain reaction as the rising water caused the airlock doors to begin closing.

With each door they reached the water was deeper and the going got slower. By the time they reached the last door the water was waist deep and Sherry, who was the first to reach it, had to wedge herself into it to hold it open for the rest of them. Jake grabbed one of her arms, as did Chris, Piers hesitantly following his Captain's lead and help pull her through before the door slammed shut.

"This place should hold," Piers gasped, struggling to catch his breath, "It's sturdier."

Above the Haos slammed into the roof again and again.

"Where are we?" Sherry looked around at stacks of crates and shapes covered by tarps.

Jake looked under one of the tarps and found an unidentifiable piece of machinery, "Storage I think."

"Looks like it," Chris nodded, "We get through here and then we're in the next building. After that we should be good."

"Should be," Jake muttered under his breath, earning a glare from Sherry.

A stack of boxes fell over as Haos continued its fruitless assault on the roof.

Jake, Piers and Chris picked their way around and over the boxes, Sherry leading the way to help them over the worst of it. Chris was willing to take her hand and be pulled over to the other side of a fallen shelf, but Piers refused, looking at her suspiciously before climbing over on his own.

His stubbornness was costing them time, but as much as Jake wanted to call him on it he couldn't think of a way that wouldn't hurt Sherry's feelings, so he kept silent.

A short flight of stairs brought them to another airlock style door, this one closed.

"Probably linked to the rest of them," Piers commented, walking over to the keypad next to it, "But since it's dry here the override should work."

"Should?" Jake glared at him, "What happens if it doesn't?"

"Will work," Piers snapped back, "Just keep back and let me handle it. I know what I'm doing."

"Just like you knew what you were doing when you had to take one last shot at that thing to make sure it was good and pissed off."

"I was trying to kill it," Piers turned from the door, "While you were running away."

"What did you expect me to do?" Jake took a step forward, "You wouldn't give me a gun so I couldn't help, not that it would have done any good anyway."

"Can we please not fight?" Sherry grabbed Jake and tried to get between him and Piers, "Please?"

"Everyone! Calm down!" Chris shouted, nipping the conflict in the bud.

"Captain!" Piers turned and saluted so smartly that Jake burst out laughing.

"Jake," Sherry , trying to clamp a hand over his mouth, which only made him laugh harder.

There was a loud buzz as the door began to open.

Piers stepped aside, smirking, "I said I could do it."

Once the door was fully opened they went through into a much larger room, this one mostly empty save for a few partially disassembled submersibles.

"See that ladder?" Piers pointed to a partially enclosed structure in the center of the room, "Straight up there and we're at the escape pods."

"Good job," Chris commented, "Let's go."

To Jake it sounded like he was praising a dog, but because Sherry still had her hand over his mouth he couldn't comment. It was like she didn't trust him or something.

"I just don't like leaving that thing behind out there," Piers complained as they made their way across the room.

"I don't like it either," Chris shook his head and looked over his shoulder, "But there's nothing we can do."

With a sound like the end of the world the room behind them collapsed, a solid wall of water pushing its way through the airlock.

A moment later a pair of tentacle like arms reached in as Haos began to pull itself through the already closing door, slowing the flow of water with its body.

"You've got to be kidding me," Jake pushed Sherry's hand off his mouth, "Still?"

It twisted and clawed its way across the room, getting caught halfway through as the two sides of the door began to press down on it. Whirling around it pushed and pounded on the door until it finally pulled free, ripping itself in half in the process as the door finished closing. Shuddering, it fell over and lay still, its skin darkening until it was nearly black.

"Is it dead?" Piers wondered, "It couldn't have lived through that, could it?"

Jake desperately wanted to believe that he was right, but the appearance of the body was too familiar, "That thing was made with the C-virus, right?"

Chris nodded.

"Then it's not dead."

Sure enough, the blackened mass began to twitch and crack, slime pouring out as the regenerated Haos emerged. Considerably smaller, it was also faster, surging forward before any of them could react, lashing out with arms and tentacles alike.

Jake was sent flying when one caught him across the chest, barely managing to roll out of the way of its next swing.

Somewhere nearby someone was shouting for help.

Half stunned, he struggled to his feet, waiting for his head to stop spinning before he dared to take a step. The spinning started to subside, but didn't fade completely. The sense of vertigo that lingered suggested that he probably had a concussion. It could have been worse though, a lot worse.

His first thought was Sherry, but she was fine, crouching over Chris, who looked like he'd been knocked out. She was protecting the Captain, batting at Haos' tentacles with her claws to try and keep it back.

It was Piers then. Little as he liked the BSAA operative, in a situation like this they needed all the help they could get.

He found the agent, his arm pinned beneath part of one of the submersibles. There was a lot of blood, too much for the injury to be survivable even if he called Sherry over to lift the hunk of metal.

Grimacing, Piers shoved his rifle across the floor to Jake, "Take it and..."

Jake followed his gaze to the briefcase, it had come open revealing a single pressure injector containing...something. A sample of the enhanced C-virus possibly, or maybe something worse. He had no clue what was going on, what the BSAA operatives had been up to before they ran into each other.

Piers was looking past him now, watching the fight that was playing out behind them. Jake turned to watch. Sherry had left Chris, jumped on top of Haos, and was clawing at the back of its neck, trying to sever its spine. An arm wrapped around her, threw her across the room. She landed on all fours and charged forward, teeth bared in the same half crazed expression she had worn while fighting the B.O.W. on the barge.

Dropping to his knees, Jake picked up the rifle, started to get back up and thought better of it. He still wasn't seeing too straight and he'd probably be a bit steadier this way, less likely to hit Sherry by mistake.

Behind him Piers screamed.

He ignored it, had to ignore it, as he took aim.

Managing a shot like Piers had earlier wasn't going to be a thing, not when he could barely hold his hands steady, but Haos was a large enough target.

Piers was still screaming.

Jake fired.

Haos roared.

He couldn't tell if it was because he'd hit it or if it was because Sherry had jumped up to start clawing at its face.

Metal shifted behind him, adding to the cacophony.

Piers was still screaming.

"Shut up!" he pulled the trigger, only to realize that he'd just fired the last round in the gun, "Shit."

Something moved to his side, but his peripheral vision was mostly gray at this point so he ignored it.

Maybe Piers had more ammo on him.

Jake struggled to his feet and turned around, but the sniper was gone.

A streak of blood showed where he'd been, blood and blackish green slime. The briefcase was empty, the injector nowhere to be found.

No, that was impossible. No way.

He'd never...

Jake turned. Piers was kneeling next to Chris, helping him to his feet and shoving him towards the ladder.

There was something off about the sniper, but the angle he was at made it impossible to tell.

Haos shook Sherry off, moved to follow through and grab her. She dodged its grasping hands.

Piers ran at it, punching it in the side with an arm that was little more than a club of bone studded with spines.

The crazy asshole really had done it.

Haos swatted the mutated sniper with a tentacle, sending him staggering back. The spines remained lodged in Haos, stuck in its side. It was hard to tell, but it looked like twitching ropes of muscle were trailing from the spines, connecting them to Piers' arm.

Yes, that had to be it, judging by the way sniper was staring at the space between him and the B.O.W.

He screamed again, the air seemed to hum.

There was a blinding blue flash and a crack that left Jake's ears ringing.

When he could see again Haos was twitching, black lines radiating from where the spines were lodged in its side, the flesh on its side no longer transparent, but cloudy and white. Little arcs of electricity ran around the tendrils connecting the spines to Piers.

Sherry was crouched on the floor, head down, struggling to rub at all of her eyes at once.

Chris clung to the ladder, staring at Piers.

The sniper jerked his arm back. The tendrils snapped and the electricity stopped.

Haos shuddered one last time and lay still.

Jake dropped the gun and half walked, half staggered over to where Sherry was.

"You okay?" he managed before he fell to the floor next to her.

All her eyes were watering, the pupils little more than slits, but she nodded, "You?"

"I might be concussed," he tried to look her in the eye, but he couldn't decide which set to go with, "But we can worry about that later."

"Did you see -" Sherry started only to fall silent as she looked towards the ladder.

"Captain," Piers was begging, "I had to! It would have killed you and I-"

"Piers!" Chris grabbed him by the shoulder, between a set of jagged bone spines, "Snap out of it! Stay focused, we've still got to get out of here."

The sniper nodded slowly, his expression dazed.

Chris started to climb the ladder.

When Piers attempted to do the same a fan of spines spread out along the bottom of his mutated limb. He stared at it, like he was trying to figure out where it had come from, before hooking them over the rungs and following his Captain.

"I can't believe he actually did it," Jake laughed.

"It's not funny," Sherry scolded.

"You're right," he leaned heavily against her as she rose to her feet, "It's fucking hilarious."

She stared at him with both forward facing sets of eyes.

"What?" he allowed her to start guiding him towards the ladder, "You couldn't have missed the way he was looking at you, and now..."

"It's not funny," she said softly.

When Jake found himself unable to climb up the ladder on his own Sherry wrapped her arms around him and carried him.

"I might be more than a little concussed," he admitted sheepishly.

"But you'll be fine, right?"

"It's just a concussion," he blinked, trying to decide if his vision was clearing any. He thought it might be.

"I don't know what that means," Sherry sounded nervous, "I kind of, you know, don't really stay injured for very long."

"Yeah," he patted her on the arm, "I know."

By the time they made it to the top of the ladder and got to the room with the escape pods Piers had already loaded Chris into one. It sounded like the two of them were having an argument, one that revolved around whether or not the sniper should be left behind. Interestingly enough it was Piers who was arguing in favor that he be abandoned while the Captain was getting increasingly frantic, grabbing at him and trying to pull him in.

Sherry opened the pod next to theirs, put Jake in and then shoved Piers in with both main hands, stood there until the door closed and then climbed in with Jake.

When she saw the look on his face she shrugged, "I don't want anyone else getting hurt."

He wasn't going to complain, if anything it would work for their benefit, keep the BSAA distracted if they were the ones waiting at the surface.

"Sorry it's a tight fit," Sherry giggled nervously as she reached over and closed the pod's door.

Jake leaned back against her, "Don't worry about it. Feels pretty comfortable to me."

"I guess?" she sounded so confused as she braced her main arms against the walls and held onto him with her secondary set as the pod launched, "So, what now?"

That was a very good question, one that he'd been giving far more thought to than her, "You think the vaccine is real?"

"What?" she looked down at him, "What do you mean?"

"They used me to enhance the C-virus," he shrugged, "Simmons' J'avo brought us back to Umbrella, you were working for Simmons through the D.S.O. I mean I guess I'm good for a C-virus vaccine because I've already been exposed to it."

"That's right," Sherry nodded, her expression thoughtful.

"But I'd be good for other vaccines too, right? Because…"

"Yes, your unique antibodies mean you're immune to just about anything," she stopped, her eyes closing halfway, "But..."

"Yeah, but I'd have to be exposed it to be good for the vaccine, wouldn't I?" he asked, already knowing from her expression what the answer would be.

"Yes, they'd have to," her eyes closed the rest of the way, "Call you in any time they needed something."

"Do you really think they'd do it that way?" he shifted so that he could hold her hand, "Knowing who I...my father was."

"That doesn't matter! I told you…but they wouldn't care…" the fear in her voice when she finally realized what he was getting at caught him off guard, "Oh god Jake! They'd keep you trapped in some lab, testing, experimenting, they'd never let you out!"

"Hey! No!" he turned around to face her, put his hands on her shoulders and watched as she went cross-eyed looking at them, "It's not going to happen that way, we don't have to let it."

"How?" she was shaking, "What can you do?"

He was trapped under water with a B.O.W., one that he needed to talk out of a panic attack because it was worried about him. His life really had gone crazy since Edonia.

Except her fear wasn't just for him, was it? She'd been trapped for her whole life, now she saw the same thing happening to him, with no hope of escape for either of them. He had a plan though, or the start of one at least, "Once we get to shore we get in touch with the D.S.O., find out if they still want my blood. If they do we make an offer, see what they're willing to pay for it. We don't go to them or anything like that, arrange a transfer of money and pickup or something like that. If it works they've got the antibodies and we've got money to start with. If they don't want it or won't pay, that just means things'll take a little longer. I've got money of my own stashed away here and there. It'll take time, maybe I'll have to find work in the meantime, but once we have the money we get back to Europe, get in touch with some guys I know and see about working things out from there. The thing is, we stick together through it. Long term I'll be able to find work for both of us easy enough, it's just a matter of looking around."

"We?" she blinked, a very noticeable gesture when it happened with so many eyes, "You want me to come with you? Why?"

"Why the hell not?" because this wasn't the time or place for him to admit that he was probably in love with her, not when he was still trying to figure things out for himself, "Do you really want to go back to where you were before?"

She shook her head, "No."

"That settles it then," he awkwardly shrugged out of the backpack in an attempt to get more comfortable, in the process discovering that the bottle of scotch had somehow managed to remain unbroken through it all. He took that as a sign, once they were safe and had things figured out the two of them would have to get drunk to celebrate, "We get to shore and take things from there."

Leaning forward he peered out the window of the pod, "Looks like it's getting lighter out. We must be getting near the surface, best be ready for whoever ends up finding us."


	8. Freedom

**Notes:** The final installment of this piece. At just over 45,000 words, the longest single piece I've written so far. Thank you all for reading this through to the end. I've probably got a bit more fun to have with these two, but it will have to wait. I'm going to be trying my hand at writing a few more long pieces, see what I can do. If you enjoyed this feel free to take a look at my other works, and again, thank you.

o0o

The pod bobbed to the surface.

Cautiously Jake opened the hatch and looked around. They were in the middle of a patch of debris, helicopters circled overhead and in the distance there were boats. The pod with Chris and Piers wasn't too far from where they were and he could see the two BSAA agents. He couldn't make out any words, but it looked like they were in the middle of an animated discussion. That was good, give whoever picked them up something other than Sherry to worry about.

"The helicopters are BSAA," Sherry commented.

Now that she mentioned it he could make out the logo on the side of one as it turned, "Could be worse."

Could be better, but it could have been a lot worse. The BSAA would be looking for survivors, take them into custody, but they had no actual jurisdiction over anything. If it had been the Chinese government things would have been very different.

None of the boats had the BSAA logo on them anywhere, but they belonged to the organization as well, judging by the uniforms of the soldiers on board. They ended up going to Chris and Piers' pod first, because Chris was waving them over. The commotion that followed when they saw the state Piers was in gave Jake an idea. Since BSAA had no real authority of its own the organization always had to worry about its interactions with other agencies.

"Sherry, the instant they come over here tell them who you are and who you work for," he instructed, even as she retreated back into the pod, pressing herself against the bottom, "Name drop, pull rank, demand to speak to whoever's in charge of things, whatever it takes to keep them off balance. Make it clear that I'm in your custody and you're not going to hand me over to just anyone. Your friend from earlier, Leon? He's got connections, right? Take advantage of that and anything else you can think of."

Not a perfect plan, but given the situation it was the best option.

"What good will that do?" she whimpered, "You really think that'll stop them from..."

"It's working for Redfield," Jake smirked as he watched the scene playing out on the boat. The BSAA Captain was yelling almost loud enough for Jake to hear him over the boat's engine and gesturing emphatically while Piers stood perfectly still, surrounded by BSAA operatives with their weapons drawn. One of them must have said something that the Captain didn't like, because as Jake watched, he grabbed the man by his shoulders and pushed him to the side of the boat, yelling in his face, "But don't take things quite that far."

"What's he doing?" Sherry lifted her head just enough to look out, "Oh, wow. That's not good."

Two of the other operatives had to step away from Piers to pull Chris off of the unfortunate individual that he had grabbed and was attempting to throw overboard.

More yelling followed while they pried the Captain off.

How the hell he'd managed to last in the organization was beyond Jake. In his experience officers like that tended to meet with accidents, either through their own efforts or those of their subordinates. Did being famous really count for that much? Enough to get away with shit that should have cost you your job or gotten you shot?

"If they don't end up shooting him for that they'll probably be ready to pass everything off to be someone else's problem so we should be good," Jake watched as the yelling continued.

Through it all Piers stood uselessly in the center of the boat, the operatives around him lowering their weapons as it dawned on them that the B.O.W. was the less dangerous of the two individuals they had just pulled onboard.

Eventually someone must have said the right thing, because Chris stepped back, stood next to Piers, and the boat started moving again.

"You ready?" Jake asked as the boat approached them.

"I guess," she muttered, "You really think it'll work?"

"They can't leave you here, after the show Chris put on they're probably not going to want to shoot you," Jake shrugged, "We just need to keep it so that they're going to want to pass the buck as soon as possible, let you be the D.S.O.'s problem."

Jake sat down on the side of the pod, nearly falling over when a wave caused it to rock. Caught up in watching the drama unfold, he'd forgotten about his concussion until that moment.

Sherry managed to grab him before he hit the water, just as the boat slowed and turned to retrieve them.

"I..." Sherry took a deep breath, "I'm agent Sherry Birkin of the D.S.O. This man is Jake Muller, I'm bringing him into custody and he needs immediate medical attention."

There was a moment of stunned silence before every single BSAA member on the boat turned to look at Chris.

"Bring them on board," Chris ordered, oblivious to the fact that they weren't looking to him for instructions, but to make sure that he wouldn't try anything.

Jake could understand why, after all that fuss over one B.O.W. none of them were willing to take any chances.

Sherry passed Jake onboard and he was immediately brought inside the boat's cabin.

"What's your story?" a scowling BSAA operative demanded in heavily accented English.

"I'm cold, wet, exhausted, probably concussed and feel like I'm about to pass out."

After running on adrenaline and little else for the past day, Jake promptly followed through on the last part, not waking up until the boat was at the dock.

The first thing he noticed was that his hands were zip tied together behind his back. It made sense, he supposed, he was Sherry's captive, or something. He had no clue what story she might have told them while he was out, he just hoped that she left out any details about who he was.

There was a commotion out on deck, Chris was repeating his earlier performance for a much larger audience on the docks. This time Piers was joining in, corroborating details and trying to elaborate on parts where Chris was unable to clarify. It was kind of funny, watching what happened as it quickly became apparent to the BSAA operatives that the creepy, J'avo looking B.O.W. was telling a far more coherent sequence of events than the Captain. The best part of it was easily that Piers being in a BSAA uniform was an obvious cause of distress, far more so than Sherry, who was standing back and only occasionally chiming in to agree with Piers or point towards the cabin where Jake was.

The argument took a turn for the worse when someone on the docks cited the standard procedure for dealing with infected individuals, civilian or otherwise.

Chris nearly jumped off the boat to get to them before Piers was able to grab him, telling the Captain that it was for the best.

"No!" Sherry shouted above the commotion that followed, "You can't! He's infected with the C-virus. You do that and he'll just regenerate. You'd have to keep...and that would be horrible!"

Jake wondered whether it was the idea of having to kill one of their comrades in a decidedly messy fashion that stopped the argument or if it was the realization that Sherry wasn't one of theirs and that she might not be willing to stand there and take it if they decided to try shooting her until she was dead. Hell, it might have been the fact that she was with the D.S.O. and they didn't want to deal with the paperwork that would follow if they were to damage the organization's property.

In the end they decided to let Piers live, probably because he was the one keeping Chris from causing an incident.

It was going to be a mess for the BSAA, dealing with an insane hero and a B.O.W. that had been one of their own who had voluntarily infected himself. There was no way the situation would mean good things for the organization, which would work to his benefit. There would be a lot of confusion for sure, even more than normally happened in disaster situations, and confusion tended to lead to people getting sloppy and mistakes being made.

Piers being let off the boat safe and unharmed set a precedent, the BSAA operatives surrounding Sherry backed off slightly, a few even lowering their weapons.

Two BSAA members who looked absolutely thrilled with the situation came into the cabin. One of them, a tried looking Chinese woman, looked him up and down, frowning, "Is that thing really with the D.S.O.?"

Jake shrugged, "That's what she told me back in Edonia, that the D.S.O. wanted me for a C-virus vaccine. Then Umbrella captured us so there has to be something to it."

"Was," the woman took a deep breath, her frown turning into a grimace as she continued, "She like that when she found you? Because there are rumors going around…"

"Not before Umbrella got us," Jake answered truthfully.

The woman nodded, clearly not pleased with the answer, but willing to accept that it was the best she was going to get, "Whatever they were working with, we got lucky didn't we?"

"It was a pretty close call," Jake agreed and then for good measure continued, "If not for what Piers did back in the lab things would have turned out a lot worse."

Because being agreeable was probably the best way to keep them off balance for now, especially if it involved saying nice things about the BSAA's new and interesting issue of having, at least for the moment, a B.O.W. that was technically working for it.

Chris and Piers, redefining the idea of useful idiots in new and interesting ways.

The two operatives brought him on deck, where Sherry promptly grabbed him with both her secondary arms.

"What now?" she whispered.

"We cooperate," Jake replied, keeping an eye on Chris. The Captain's actions were going to determine what happened next.

Chris was helped onto the dock. Piers, who by this point seemed to have realized that the Captain's cooperation was dependent on his presence, followed. Jake wished he'd have the opportunity to watch the show that was sure to follow as the two were led away.

He was pulled away from Sherry and onto the dock, everyone stepping back so that she could come up after him.

After that they were shuffled from location to location by ever smaller numbers of guards as the BSAA quickly decided that manpower was best spent dealing with the outbreak rather than a largely cooperative B.O.W. and its captive, or whatever he was. Jake hadn't asked, all he knew was that someone must have looked into the matter and confirmed that there was indeed an agent Sherry Birkin working for the D.S.O., one who might have been infected with something prior to the events leading up to the outbreak. Questions were asked, Sherry answered them, confirming her identity and further complicating the situation for the BSAA by bringing up the very real danger of inter-agency politics when she admitted that not only had she been infected with a mutagenic virus prior to being sent on her mission, but the D.S.O. was aware of it.

Shortly after that Jake was given a cursory examination by a doctor who seemed more frustrated than nervous despite Sherry watching his every move. It was confirmed that Jake was concussed, dehydrated, had an assortment of minor scrapes and bruises, none of which came as a surprise considering what he'd been through.

Before long they were left alone in a tent off to one side of an area where the BSAA had set up a makeshift base. There was plenty going on elsewhere, but the area they were in was fairly quiet. It seemed that no one expected any trouble from them. No one was there guarding them, though an officer of unknown rank had promised them that someone would be coming by soon, to get a few more details straightened out and start working something out with the D.S.O., which apparently did still want Jake for something.

Once they were gone Jake turned to Sherry, "We're not waiting."

She nodded, "I know, I just don't like this."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

Sherry used her claws to cut the zip ties, and Jake lifted the bottom edge of the tarp to look outside. What he saw was promising, the base was near the harbor, a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire defining its perimeter. The fence itself was a temporary affair, held in place with cinderblocks.

Escaping was simply a matter of finding a gap between two sections of fence and slipping away into the confusion.

They'd be long gone by the time anyone realized they were missing.

As for what came next, Jake would figure things out as they happened. The strategy had worked for him so far after all. Right now they just needed to find a place for him to rest and recover for a few days, then they could focus on other things, important things, like bargaining with the D.S.O. for Sherry's freedom, getting money and getting out of China.

If they could get back to Edonia everything would be okay, that was what he'd tell her. He had money there, people he knew, if they were still alive, connections and he knew the area. There were plenty of places where a person could vanish there.

In Edonia they'd be okay.

When Jake stumbled Sherry caught him and let him lean against her for support. He was exhausted, had every right to be after all he'd gone through. He was only human after all.

Sherry on the other hand was…whatever she was. Physically she seemed fine, like she could keep going forever. Mentally though, that might have been another story. She had a distant, inward look in her eyes, like she was lost in some conflict unknown to him. There was more to it than her coming to terms with what she was, it was about what she'd become. Maybe she'd finally realized that for the first time in her life she was free.

It was something he could relate to, the pain and sense of loss that came with it. He remembered too well what it had felt like when he'd ended up in a similar situation, no longer having to worry about his mom's failing health. He'd been relieved and felt horrible for feeling that way, knowing that a long, horrible wait with no possibility of a good outcome had come to an end.

That was freedom for you.

He'd gotten over it, except it wasn't something you got over, you just learned to live with it. You had to move on and stay focused on what was going to come next because life didn't stop just because you needed to figure things out.

Looking up at Sherry he smiled.

She shook her head, still not sure of what to make of the situation. She wasn't crying though, which was a start.

Everything would be okay.

He told her as much and this time she managed the barest hint of a smile, letting him know he was right.


End file.
